


The Not-Quite-Midnight Society +1

by TheIcyQueen



Category: Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Campfires, Comedy, Friendship, Gen, Horror, Humor, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 93,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28271316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIcyQueen/pseuds/TheIcyQueen
Summary: The gang heads up to the lodge for a night of s'mores, stars, and spooky stories told around a campfire. They can all put their differences aside and get along for ONE night, right? (They can't.) And everyone can get over themselves and have fun telling lame ghost stories, right? (They absolutely cannot.) Regardless, as they sit out there on the mountaintop alone...in the dark...perfectly and utterly defenseless...there's something everyone can agree on:Boy, it sure is a good thing that nothing WEIRD or DANGEROUS ever happens in Blackwood Pines!
Comments: 155
Kudos: 54





	1. The Not-Quite-Midnight Society

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! This fic is going to be (at least in PART) a collection of horror stories!! My goal is more to sort of...explore the UD characters' voices and play around with what sorts of things would strike each of them as horror-story-worthy, so while you shouldn't expect this to be full a balls to the wall blood and gore splatterfest by any means, I WILL be posting pertinent content/trigger warnings up here in the author's note with each chapter just in case! :)
> 
> Better safe than sorry, am I right?

If there was one thing that could be said about Josh, it was that he sure loved to hear himself talk. No one up there on the mountain was going to argue with that—not a single living soul.

…but if there was a _second_ thing that could be said about Josh, it was that he understood the importance of timing. Oh, he knew that shit backwards and forwards, inside and out. He’d been cool as a cucumber the whole day and into the night, all loose smiles and happy-go-lucky shrugs, witty comebacks and awful jokes. He hadn’t even let on as they grabbed what they needed to make s’mores and filled their thermoses to head out towards the fire pit on the back of the property. Nope, nope, nope…as far as any of them knew, it was just another visit to the Pines, just another weekend where they’d drink too much (the Washingtons had never even _considered_ locking the liquor cabinet in the lodge) and sleep not enough, and that was fine by all of them.

Until the fire got going, at least.

Now the thing about the mountain was that it never really got _dark_ -dark. The sun had a habit of disappearing behind the horizon, sure, and darkness was typically the sort of thing that happened after such an event, but the fact of the matter was that the sky was just _too_ clear. The moon, the stars, the occasional green swirls of the aurora borealis…all of that shit tended to reflect off the snow, making the nighttime dim. Dim, but never fully _black_. There was always some degree of visibility up there.

Josh waited until that visibility was at its very lowest and the fire was at its very highest. Then, raising his bottle dramatically to his lips, he finally showed his hand. “I’m sure you’re all wondering why I’ve brought you here tonight.”

That halted conversation right quick. Not because it was dramatic or ominous or anything like that (it _wasn’t,_ though they were all _positive_ that was how it had sounded in his mind), but out of sheer confusion. That much was evident as they glanced around the circle at one another, a few narrowing their eyes but none asking the obvious question.

 _He’d_ brought them here, huh?

Slowly though, almost one by one, those looks of confusion were replaced by looks of realization…in a few cases, even suspicion. Any passing telepath would’ve gotten a kick out of it, no doubt, the way they all seemed to put the pieces together at the same time: It was something of a tradition to get a big fire going when they spent a weekend up on the mountain, but that always happened on the _last_ night of their stay, not the _first_ …and back in the lodge, their bags still stood by the stairs, untouched and un-unpacked, waiting for the inevitable squabbling that came with the assignment of bedrooms.

As they all thought back on it, it _had_ been Josh who’d suggested a fire tonight…and it _had_ been Josh who’d made a few well-placed comments earlier in the day that had gotten them thinking about graham crackers and chocolate and marshmallows…and shit, it _had_ been Josh who’d pointed out they had plenty of thermoses ready for all kinds of hot drinks, and _fuck!_

He’d brought them here.

“Well shit,” someone muttered, though it was hard to tell who from over the loud, comforting crackle of the fire.

“Here we go…” added someone else, very likely one of the twins.

The only two who _didn’t_ look terribly caught off guard were (of course) Chris and Ashley—the two who _always_ seemed to know what bullshit Josh was planning. They didn’t look surprised, but they didn’t look terribly thrilled either, and that only added to the general vibe of uncertainty in the air. Sam kept glancing their way, leaning around Josh to try and really zero in on their expressions…but if she was getting anything out of them, she didn’t say.

Leaning _around_ Sam’s lean, Beth craned her head towards Josh, hissing a sisterly warning in That Tone™, the one only audible to siblings. “Can we go _one night_ without you doing something weird in front of our friends? _One?!_ ”

Though he didn’t answer her directly, he raised his eyebrows. His expression was terrible in its clarity; _No_ , said the smirk wending its way across his face, _No, I don’t think we can, my darling dearest baby sister, I don’t think we can._ “It’s come to my attention,” he said once he’d taken (what he thought had been) a particularly showy swig of his beer, “That none of you slackers have been doing your part to contribute to the entertainment provided during these little shindigs of ours…so I thought maybe tonight’s the night you all pay your dues.”

There was a moment of silence. Perfect, wintry silence. Then Hannah stood up. “Yeah, no, okay, I have no idea what that means, but I don’t think I want to—”

“Oh, sit down, you big baby. I’m talking about telling campfire stories, not taking a goddamn blood oath.” Josh rolled his eyes as he jammed his bottle into the snowdrift behind his bench. “I swear, _this_ is what I’m talking about! No appreciation for theatricality.”

“Wait, what about stories?” Jess had been warming her hands by the fire up until that point, but then she pulled them back, tucking them underneath her arms as though to hug herself. “I thought we were just gonna roast some marshmallows?”

“You can do both. I have faith in your ability to multitask.” His tone strongly suggested otherwise. “Anyway!” Josh clapped his hands once, and with no gloves to muffle it, the sound rang across the clearing like a gunshot, making them all sit up a little straighter. “As the schmuck who always seems to end up carrying the weight during spooky story time—”

Mike leaned just to his left, muttering, “Oh _this_ oughta be good,” to Emily.

“—I thought tonight would be a _fantastic_ night for each of you to see what it’s like. Feel the pressure of it, know what I mean? So…let’s go, chop chop.”

Another wave of low chatter and sidelong looks rippled through the circle at that, not entirely unlike the vibe that passes through a classroom when the teacher starts asking for volunteers. Suddenly everyone had something more important to focus on, or a piece of ash had flown into their eye, or _man_ , they just realized how very delicious the hot chocolate in their thermos was.

But if there was a _third_ thing that could be said about Josh, it was that he didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

Oh no.

Not by a long shot.

“Ohoho!” he joked, leaning back on his portion of the bench, “No one volunteers as tribute, huh? No one’s just champin’ at that bit to put together a thrilling, compelling story for the rest of us? No one? Bueller? Bueller?”

“The _reason_ you’re the one always telling the ghost stories, _Josh_ ,” came Emily’s voice from the other side of the fire, “Is because _you’re_ the one who spends their time thinking about all that warped shit.”

If it had been meant as an insult (and it had), it missed its mark. Josh pressed a hand to his chest like a blushing debutante and beamed. “Thank you for noticing. But flattery will get you nowhere. Not _here_ , not on _my_ mountain.” He spread his arms wide at that, Julie Andrews lit by a bonfire instead of the sun, and once more he looked around the circle they made. “ _One of you_ has to have some kind of creepy, crawly story hiding deep, deep, _deep_ inside your hearts.”

“This is so stupid,” Beth muttered, apparently just a little too loudly, as a moment later Josh reached around Sam to smack her upside the head. It didn’t actually hurt, but it sure as fuck knocked her beanie off. “ _Hey!_ Watch it, dickbag! You’re so—”

“So who’s it gonna be?” he asked as he ignored her, looking pointedly to his left.

It was hilarious, honestly, the way that single look managed to create a wave: Josh looked to Sam, who quickly turned to Beth, who looked to Hannah, who nervously glanced at Mike, who turned to Emily, who rolled her eyes to Jess, who stared towards Matt, who looked to Ashley, who turned to Chris, who proudly proclaimed, “ _I’m_ not doing it.”

“I don’t even get why we’re _considering_ this,” Jess piped in, “It’s so pointless! Why would we—”

“Yeah, this is seriously not what I signed up for. What, just because _Josh_ thinks we should waste our time on this, that automatically means we have to—”

“I don’t even _know_ any ghost stories, man, that’s not my bag. I’m more an action-slash-adventure kinda guy myself, and—”

“I’ll go.”

There was no wave that time…they all just turned to look.

Matt’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “I think I’ve got something. Not saying it’s any _good_ , but…I dunno guys, it’s a solid point, Josh _is_ always the one who—” It wasn’t all of them, but a solid chunk of the group groaned at that, and he had to wait it out before continuing. “—the one who comes up with stories to freak us out when we’re up here, so like…c’mon.”

“Yeah guys,” Josh added, “ _C’mon_.”

Another long moment passed where the lot of them glared at each other like kids in detention…and then everyone seemed to fold. “Fine,” someone murmured, sounding about as pleased as they might’ve been with a dentist’s drill in their mouth. “Whatever.”

And so their night began.


	2. Matt's Story: The Tale of the Locker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant tags for this chapter: Mentions of domestic/physical abuse, references to body horror/gore, use of deprecating language (i.e., "crazy")
> 
> A quick little note here for anyone interested - Just because a big part of this project was me trying to get my grubby little hands into everyone's voices, you're going to notice some stylistic/format differences between everyone's stories! Some will be more conversational, others less so, and I'm really trying to experiment a little here with how I imagine each of these sweet precious children would actually tell a story.
> 
> (Fingers crossed that experiment actually WORKS, huh? ;P)

“So should I just…jump into it?” Matt braced his hands on the bench and leaned forward, looking past Ashley and Chris towards Josh. “Like ‘Once upon a time,’ or…?”

Josh fixed him with a look that wasn’t quite exasperated (though it was quickly getting there)…and then his face lit up. The ones in the group who knew him best understood immediately that this was not a _great_ development—when inspiration struck in the Washington household, the results usually bordered on the ridiculous. “Oh. Oh I…love this. From the bottom of my crusty, dusty, old heart, I fucking… _love_ this…” Josh looked around the circle again, that time with purpose. Was he taking a headcount? Eenie-meenie-minie-moing? Hard to tell, at least until he got to the end of the circuit and grinned. “Oh this is too perfect…” Turning back to Matt, he said, “ _Are You Afraid of the Dark?_!”

He blinked. “Uh…no? I’m…I’m pretty okay with the dark. I definitely wouldn’t say I’m scared—”

Josh’s eyes rolled so hard it almost seemed they’d pop out of his head. “ _No_ , I mean…oh goddamn it…the show: _Are You Afraid of the Dark?_ You guys remember that shit? Bunch of tiny tweens in awful clothes sitting around a fire? Telling stories? Trying to spook each other? Saying ‘aboot?’”

Their silence spoke volumes.

“Well _I_ remember it,” Chris said, earning a hearty groan from the rest of the group. “Oh come on, it was a classic! A _classic!_ ”

“…I wasn’t allowed to watch it…” Ashley mumbled into her thermos, surprising literally no one.

Josh wasn’t about to have his fun ruined—that much was _abundantly_ clear. He held his hands up to the rest of them in a gesture they had to figure meant something along the lines of ‘WAIT!’ and hopped over the back of the bench, trudging a few feet through the snow until he reached the nearest tree. The Pines wasn’t called The Pines for nothing, after all; the place was absolutely packed full of the things, so it took him all of forty seconds to find and snap off a few boughs of mostly-dead needles before joining them at the fire again. “The whole point of the show,” he said as though he _hadn’t_ just gone on a journey of his own, “Was that these kids, the uh, the Midnight Society as they called themselves, would sit around a campfire and tell each other scary stories. They had this whole routine they did, too, because all of their stories were sort of…well, the rest of the group had to either yea or nay them, get what I’m saying? So they’d start each story with ‘Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, this is the Tale of…’ and then whatever the title was.”

“I’m _so_ glad I came here instead of going skiing with my dad and step-mom,” Emily grumbled in Mike’s general direction. “I could be in _Aspen_ right now…”

“So I should…” Matt watched Josh for a second longer, narrowing his eyes as he watched him shuck dry brown pine needles from branch after branch before shrugging again. “Okay, uh…then this is—”

“Hang on, hang on, slow your roll, hotshot.” Josh grabbed up a handful of the pine needles and threw them into the fire, causing it to momentarily flash and crackle. He waved to Matt after that, spurring him on.

Matt’s eyes flicked between the fire and Josh. “…now I can go?”

“Now you can go.”

“Okay, uh…” he clapped his hands to his knees, straightening up as he assumed what felt like a better story telling posture, if such a thing truly existed. “This is the—”

“…submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society…” Josh prompted him.

“It’s not even midnight, though?”

“Shut _up_ , Hannah.”

“No, she’s right—can we really be the Midnight Society if it’s like…nine-forty-five?”

“I’m sorry, there are fucking _ten_ of us here. You want to be up until four in the fucking morning listening to number seven stumble through the urban legend they sorta-kinda-maybe-half-remember from that one time they heard it back in band camp? No? Then quit talking.”

To his credit, Matt only looked _somewhat_ doubtful as he tried again. “Okay, uh, submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, then, this is…” He glanced to Josh, his grimace telling them all that he still wasn’t entirely sold on what it was that he was meant to say next.

“This is the Tale of…”

“Oh, right. This is the Tale of the Locker.”

“The lock…no, know what? Never mind. Go for it. Take it away. Tale of the Locker. Sure. Cool. Let’s go.”

***

When I switched schools, I was kind of nervous I wouldn’t make the—

***

“Hey, uh, hang on a second.” Matt stopped himself almost the moment he’d begun, eyebrows drawn together to wrinkle his forehead as something occurred to him. “This isn’t actually about _me_ , it’s just…” he glanced over to Ashley, then Jess to his other side, “It’s just how the story _goes_ , you know?”

Absolutely incapable of stopping herself, Ashley provided him the word he was looking for, keeping her lips as still as she could, lest one of the others call her out on her know-it-allism. “First-person.”

“Yeah! Yeah, it’s in first-person. But like…none of this happened to _me_ , I just want to make sure—”

By then Josh had dropped his head into his hands. It was only for a second, but when he looked up again, his fingers had dug hollows into his cheeks and tugged his lower eyelids downwards. “Okay. Duly noted. Your story’s not about you. Who woulda thunk it. Great, can we—”

“Oh, uh, yeah, actually, now that I’m thinking about it, my story’s first-person too.” Ashley met Matt’s gaze in a show of solidarity before turning to Josh. “But it’s not…I mean, I figured this wasn’t an autobiographical sort of—”

“Wait. _Wait_.” Beth leaned in closer to the fire and the flames danced across her cheekbones. She scanned Ashley's face, eyes narrowed, then did much the same to Chris before whirling on her brother. Suddenly it all made a little too much sense. “Did you fucking _warn_ those two?!” She let out a strangled sound of abject fury at the sly look on Josh’s face, “You absolute _asshole!_ We’re all here having to _improvise_ shit, and you gave those buffoons time to _practice?!_ ”

As though she’d just dealt him a withering insult, Chris reeled backwards. “What in God’s name makes you think I have _ever_ come prepared to anything? Ever? In my _life?!_ ”

Beth spun towards Sam, her stare nearly as fiery as the literal fire in front of them. It was clear she was searching her expression for any sign of guilt. “Did _you_ know about this?!”

Sam didn’t have an especially good poker face. “Well…”

“ _Sam!_ ” Oh, there weren’t words enough in the English language to describe how betrayed Hannah sounded.

She held her hands out and assumed her usual role as the peacekeeper. “Look, look! I think what’s important is that we all agree right here and now that we all understand no one’s stories are actually about _them_ , even if that’s how they tell them, okay?” Sam looked out around the fire, meeting everyone’s eyes in turn, “Okay? That means no making fun of them—” she paused very poignantly as she met Emily’s gaze.

One exceptionally well shaped eyebrow quirked in response. “I refuse to make that promise.”

Knowing it was probably the best she was going to do, she then turned to Ashley as she continued, “—and no _editing_ them—”

Her lips tightened into a nervous smile that threatened to become a wince.

So she turned her attention to Josh, “—no _psychoanalyzing_ them—”

He held her stare, blinking once slowly, like a cat basking in a ray of sunlight on a warm spring morning. “Now Sammy…I can’t even begin to fathom why you might be aiming that comment at _me_.”

And finally she looked to Mike, “—and no…all right, I’m not really sure what I’m nervous _you_ might do, but I do know I should be nervous about _something_ , so…just don’t do _that_. Whatever _that_ is.”

Pressing both hands to his chest, Mike feigned insult of the highest degree, rocking backwards on the bench as he made all manner of gasps and groans to signify how deeply his feelings had been hurt.

Sam heaved a long-suffering sigh and set her forehead against one of her hands, momentarily shooting Matt a tight-lipped smile before letting her eyes go out of focus so she could better reevaluate her life choices. “I think you’re good to go.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Right. Okay.” Matt cleared his throat and then began again.

***

When I switched schools, I was kind of nervous I wouldn’t make the team. Back at my old school, football was pretty much my whole life, and if I’m being totally honest, I uh…didn’t have a whole lot to fall back on if I fucked up my try-outs.

So when I saw that I’d made the cut, you better believe I was psyched. Psyched? Nah, I was _beside myself!_ No matter what else happened, or what my classes were like, or whether I found people I could chill with, I knew that I at least had that, you know? I’d still wake up in the morning to hit the first half of my two-a-days and I’d still come home at night a sweaty, hungry mess, and something about that was comforting. I dunno, routine maybe? I’m sure there are plenty of reasons for that sort of thing.

Anyway, I’d noticed that a couple of the other guys had been giving me weird looks in the locker room that first day—and not weird like shitty weird or sizing me up weird, but…weird, y’know? Weird. It was like they were all in on some joke that I didn’t know, or there was something they knew that I hadn’t figured out yet. I chalked it up to the idea that I was the newbie and that was just how it went…since I was the new guy I was _obviously_ going to have to deal with a little hazing, a little catching up to everyone else, whatever.

Then I saw the locker I was assigned and the looks kiiinda made sense.

Not to say _any_ of the lockers we had were like, fantastic, but mine? It really took the cake. It didn’t look _too_ bad on the outside, but there was this super deep, kinda weirdly round dent right where our nameplates were supposed to go, and the shape of it meant mine didn’t hang on _at all._ The old nameplate was just sort of stuck on there permanently since it was pushed out of shape by that dent. I ended up having to tape mine right over the lock, but that didn’t last even the first week, so like, thanks public school, am I right? It was the _inside_ of the thing that was a problem, though…now, it was a full-sized locker, duh, the sort that’s supposed to have a little shelf near the top. Only I didn’t get a shelf—everyone else’s had one, but not mine—maybe because of the big old dent on the door, but _definitely_ because of the rust.

It didn’t run the whole length of the locker, but like, it covered enough. Enough that it was, uh, gross. It was just this huge blob of reddish, brownish, flaky scales of rust, maybe two…two and a half feet around. The first time I opened the stupid thing I could see a dusty layer of it had collected on the bottom, and I just knew that whatever clothes I put in there before practice were going to come out covered in the stuff. The worst part was the _smell_ though. I mean…have you ever been in a basement or something where there’s a lot of old metal? It’s that smell that you get when you hold a bunch of change in your hands, or try unscrewing a screw with your bare fingers. It sticks! And it stinks.

I felt like a brat doing it, but I _did_ say something to the coach about it. But lucky me, apparently they had _just_ redone the entire locker room the semester before, like a _total_ redo—new scaffolding, new drywall, the works—which meant I was shit outta luck. Whoever had my locker before me just like, couldn’t resist fucking it up. Whatever, right? So I figured _that_ was why I was getting those looks from all the guys.

The thing is, I sort of expected that shit would stop once we really got into the season. I’m not gonna say I was the best player on the team because that would be bullshit, but I was close. Really, _really_ close. There’s always room for improvement or whatever, but I held my own. And in a way I was right, but I was _mostly_ wrong: Proving I was one of the guys and getting close with the team stopped that sense of me being left out of the joke, but it didn’t stop the looks. If anything, it…kind of made that part of it worse.

We’d just won a game against Middleton, our rival school, and we were all feeling pretty fucking good about ourselves. It was still early in the season and there were salty comments from the other team about how we had the home field advantage, but like, kiss my ass, 27-6 speaks for itself, right? We were _pumped!_ So we’re in the locker room after the game, getting back into our regular clothes so we could go over to one of the guys’ houses and just get _totally_ blitzed—nothing new—and someone asks if I knew who Billy Lowe was.

And I said…well, no, was that someone I _should’ve_ known? I figured maybe it was some weirdo substitute teacher or maybe a creepy quiet kid in one of my classes that I needed to keep an eye on or some shit, and that’s when our quarterback Miles goes up to one of the lockers— _my_ locker—and leans against it. He taps two of his fingers against the dented nameplate, the one that just wouldn’t let me put my own over it no matter how hard I tried, and uh…I realize, sort of for the first time, that the plate says ‘LOWE.’

Oh, I said, and I wasn’t really sure how to feel about that because in my head I saw this going one of two ways: One, they were about to tell me about how _awesome_ of a player this Billy guy was and I was gonna feel like the shitty newbie again, or two, they were gonna tell me something that I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know. I just had that gut feeling about it, know what I mean? Like when you’re scrolling through Facebook and you see your ex just made a post…and you know either it’s going to be emo song lyrics saying they miss you _or_ a picture of them with someone new. That kinda gut feeling.

But Miles had this grin on his face that I was sorta coming to recognize as his bullshitting face, so I figured what the hell. And I said that no, I didn’t have any idea who Billy Lowe was or why it mattered that I had his old locker, and the guys all shared that look again. That time, though, they let me in on the joke. Except I wasn’t totally sure that it _was_ a joke. I remember thinking at the time that if it _was,_ it was a real shitty one.

So I’m sitting there on the bench, right, trying to look like I don’t really care or don’t really believe what crap they’re feeding me, shirt half-on and half-off, and they start by saying like, you know this is Coach Morris’s first year, right? And—oh, that was our coach, his name was Morris—and yeah, I had sort of noticed, or caught on, or whatever, to the fact that Coach must’ve been new. He knew the guys about as well as I did, seemed like, and sometimes you’d catch him getting lost on his way to the gym. That kinda stuff.

They say yeah, up until last year, they had a different coach. Guy by the name of White. He was a pretty good coach, kind of a hardass, had a habit of going off if people were screwing around during practice, but one day the year before he just up and left. No one was too surprised though…in fact, most of them _expected_ it. See, the coach had a daughter who went to the school, and word on the street was she’d been screwing around with one of the guys on the team—one Mr. Billy Lowe. Who saw that coming, huh? Well, near the middle of the school year, the daughter stopped coming to class. If the rumors were legit, then the _reason_ she stopped showing up is because after one particularly bad game, Billy went off and just…royally beat the shit out of her.

Now at that point I just kinda looked at the guys, still pretty sure they were fucking with me but not _really_ knowing. And I said oh yeah, right, like that would happen and _you guys_ , the rest of the _team_ , would have a question mark over it instead of knowing for sure. And they all just sort of shrugged.

Well, you gotta understand what Billy was like, one of the guys said, he sort of had a history of acting…weird. One too many concussions—it’s sort of a hazard of the sport. He could be totally normal ninety-nine percent of the time, but then something would just set him off and he’d _explode_. So it didn’t seem _impossible_ that that could’ve happened.

Uh huh, I said, and none of you assholes actually _asked him?_ Then they looked around at each other, and I had that feeling again like they were sharing an inside joke.

Because he _bailed_ right after that happened, Miles said, acting like I hadn’t been paying attention or something. One day the guy was there, and the next… _poof!_ Like he’d vanished off the face of the earth. His parents didn’t know where he’d gone, none of his friends had any clue, and by then Coach White had transferred to another school out-of-state and taken his daughter with him, so the guy wasn’t exactly available for comment.

So congrats, one of the guys said, slapping me on the back, you got the crazy dude’s locker! Let’s hope he doesn’t come back and try to reclaim it or anything.

 _That’s_ when I was pretty fucking sure they’d just been messing with me. Like haha, okay guys, you’re all real class acts. So I laughed with them and rolled my eyes and we did, in fact, go out and get totally blasted that night. For about a week after that, I totally forgot all about that stupid bullshit story they told me.

But then I started noticing things.

Little stuff at first, like…like there was one day where I was alone in the locker room after practice. Or at least, I was pretty sure I was alone. I had my headphones on, and I could’ve _sworn_ I heard someone say something to me…only when I took them off, I didn’t hear it again. That happened a few other times, too—always when I was alone, though, when there wasn’t anyone else in the room. After the first time, it was never really a _voice_ , but it was more like…noises. Tapping, like someone was drumming their fingers on the lockers, or creaking, like someone was opening and closing a door, or worst of all this like…low, screechy groan.

The second anyone else came in, though? Couldn’t hear it anymore. I don’t know if it was just because _they_ were making noise too, or what, but…it was only ever when I was alone.

And then there was the day where I got back in from practice and everything—and I mean _everything_ —in my locker was covered in this…fuck, I don’t know _what_ it was, really. It was this dark, sticky shit that smelled like absolute _death_. It had soaked into my clothes, my bag, _everything_ …the entire back of my locker was covered in it, and since it was rusty to begin with, I can’t say I was jazzed about the situation. I ended up having to throw a whole bunch of shit out because there was just no saving it. And…okay, that was…when I started maybe believing that dumbshit story the guys had told me.

Like maybe Billy _was_ mad that someone else was putting their stuff in his locker. Maybe he didn’t _care_ that he wasn’t part of the team anymore and I was. Traumatic brain injuries are no joke, man, they can really screw up the way you think. Maybe it was _possible_ this guy was still hanging around, just waiting, and he wasn’t happy about me taking his spot.

Stupid, I know. Really, really stupid…but the sounds kept happening whenever I was alone. And then, right around playoffs, _someone_ filled my locker with that godawful goopy stuff again. It was starting to feel like someone _seriously_ wanted to freak me out. But none of the guys owned up to it, and by then we were good enough friends that I think I would’ve known if they were pulling my leg.

Then we’re in playoff game one, and…I get knocked the fuck out. I don’t know if you’ve ever been tackled by three guys at once, but—

***

“Oh, I _know_ you aren’t looking at _me_ ,” Jess snapped, keeping her eyes on the fire but waving a furious, accusatory finger in Emily’s face.

She shrugged coyly. “Hmm…someone’s sounding a little defensive…why would you think I was looking at _you?_ All Matt did was use the phrase ‘three guys at once,’ and—”

Before the scene could play out in all of its (familiar) glory, Ashley leaned over to Matt, shaking her head somberly as she gave him the okay. “Just…keep going,” she said apologetically, “Don’t let them spoil it for you.”

Talking over the two of them was a challenge…but he did his best.

***

I don’t know if you’ve ever been tackled by three guys at once, but it’s not something I’d recommend. I crumpled like tissue paper. I swear, my head hit the ground and for a second it was like God turned all the lights off—next thing I knew, I had a whole bunch of people shining lights into my face and snapping their fingers and poking me and stuff. Wasn’t, uh, wasn’t great.

The medic gave me a look and said I would probably be fine, but I should definitely sit the rest of the game out. I was bummed, don’t get me wrong, but also I couldn’t imagine getting back out on the field with everything as hazy and blurry as it was. One of the second-stringers was sent to sit with me in the locker room for a bit, just to make sure I didn’t like…I dunno, pass out or start spurting blood out of my eyes, I guess, and again, I felt kind of stupid for even thinking it, but…I was glad I wouldn’t have to be alone in that fucking room. I wouldn’t have to worry about hearing those noises with my head full of scrambled eggs, wondering if Billy was hiding over in the showers or some shit, just _waiting_ to get me alone.

I went to get out of my uniform, and mother _fucker_ , there was more of that shit in my locker. Only this time I had a _witness_.

Ugh, dude, he said, looking like he was about to barf, that smells like straight sewage, what the fuck did you put in there?

I tried explaining that uh, that wasn’t me, but I knew if I said something like I think Billy Lowe did it to get me to stop using his locker, he’d just roll his eyes. Uh huh, he’d probably say, okay then, Señor Concussion. So I didn’t say any of that. Besides, I’d noticed something weird. The rust spot in the back of my locker had gotten…bigger.

A _lot_ bigger.

That wasn’t _too_ weird on its own, mostly because someone had been filling my locker with that slimy stuff on and off. I might not be valedictorian, but I’m pretty sure wet things make rust worse. If it had _just_ been that the spot was bigger, I think I probably would’ve just laid myself out on the floor and waited until the game was over, but that _wasn’t_ the only thing I noticed. See, it was probably just the knock I’d taken to my head, but it sure looked like…man, it kinda looked like the wet stuff was coming _out of_ the rust.

Like it was dripping from it.

So, again, probably because someone had just shaken my brain up like a fancy cocktail, I did something I…really shouldn’t have done. I started scraping at the rust spot. It had always come off in those big flakes like I said before, but as I scratched at it, it sort of… _gave_. Instead of flakes, the metal started coming away in goopy _scabs_ , like when you have a big, open cut you can’t stop picking at. It just kept coming and coming…and I knew the other guy was trying to get me to stop, but I just _couldn’t_. It felt like something I _had_ to do, and the rust gave and gave and gave, and that thick, sewer-smelling stuff kept oozing out, and then something fell. Something fell _into_ my locker, as though it had been stuck between the back of it and the drywall for all that time. For, say, a semester. Back when they redid the locker room. Right before Coach White’s daughter got beat up and then they both hit the bricks.

Something fell _out_ from the space between the wall and my locker and _into_ the locker itself, and I didn’t need to hear what the guy next to me was shouting as it fell, because I put two and two together myself pretty quick.

Billy Lowe wouldn’t be coming to take his locker back. Because he’d never left it in the first place.

***

Matt sat back with a sheepishness very few of them had ever seen in him before and flared his fingers in the universal sign for ‘ _Ta-daaa_ ,’ his eyes skating across each of them in turn as he tried to gauge their reactions. “That’s…what I got,” he said slowly.

There was a beat where all that could be heard was the pop and crackle of the bonfire. For Matt at least, it was a moment that seemed to stretch on forever and ever and ever, a moment where they all seemed to take in the story as a whole.

Hannah was the first to shudder. “Blech,” she laughed, drawing her shoulders in tightly towards her, “So that goo was like…oh _eugh_ , nope, no thank you!”

“Wait, so the whole thing was…what? The coach stuffed him in the wall or something? How would no one have noticed _that?_ ” Emily’s eyebrows were high as she swiveled her head towards Matt, clearly and obviously less than entertained. “I’m pretty sure a contractor would’ve stepped in and pointed out the literal corpse jammed against the wainscoting.”

Sam sucked in a breath loud enough to be heard over the chatter, saying, “Thought we agreed we weren’t going to be mean about these…” as though speaking not to anyone in particular, but to the air itself.

“ _I_ liked it.” Ashley nudged Matt with her arm, the heavy denim of her jacket making an odd whisper sound against his letterman as she beamed up at him. “ _Super_ creepy. _Very_ gross.”

“Well, well, well…so the Homecoming King’s got a little _R.L. Stine_ in him! Color me shocked.” With a wide, self-satisfied grin, Josh afforded him a polite little golf-clap against the side of his beer bottle. Then, erasing any shred of doubt in their minds about what the rest of the night was going to be like, he turned to the others. “So? What say you, Midnight Society? Do we accept this story?”

Beth dropped her face into her hands. “Oh Jesus Christ.”

“Wait, we’re seriously going to _vote_ on these?”

Mike went to shoot Emily a look, but considering she was already opening her mouth, no doubt gearing up for another potshot, he settled for rolling his eyes at Jessica instead.

“If I get a say, then no. I thought these were supposed to be _scary_ …”

Jess met Mike’s gaze knowingly.

“I, for one, readily accept your submission to the Midnight Society, my good chap,” and God bless him, Chris ignored the groans of exasperation Ashley and Beth let out at the sound of his terrible British accent. He raised his own drink in a salute, leaning in towards Matt so he could cheers him, and shitty voices or not, Matt seemed more than relieved by the positive attention.

“Me too!” Hannah added, not-so-subtly poking Beth in the side, goading her with her eyes to agree.

“Me three!” Sam proceeded to prod Beth’s other side in much the same way.

“Well I—”

All ten of them froze as the night was pierced by the mournful howl of a wolf. The sound began suddenly but lingered even after it should’ve ended, the echoes hanging in the air like glitter suspended in a snow globe. When the night went quiet again, it brought the lot of them with it, none wanting to be the first to speak up in the wake of the sound.

None, of course, except who else— _Josh_. “Sounds to me that _someone_ out there enjoyed your story.” He snickered and shrugged before taking another drink. “The spirit of the woods has spoken, and your submission has been accepted! …I think. Hmm…but will the rest of you poor unfortunates be so lucky? I wonder, I wonder, I wonder…”

Head still in her hands, Beth groaned, “God, you’re such an embarrassment.”

“Are we…are we just ignoring the fucking wolf?” Jess piped in. “Because, um, hey, hi, hello? Like, congrats Matt, super psyched for you getting an A-plus on your dead body story or whatever, but I don’t want to ignore the _fucking wolf!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the first tale has been told, and the meeting of the Not-Quite-Midnight Society has truly begun!
> 
> Oh, such a journey we're about to embark on.
> 
> Good thing we've got the spirit of the woods to keep us company on that journey, hmm? Boy, I sure hope it's a NICE spirit...


	3. Interruption #1: Bears? Bears. Period. Bears.

Certain things in life were easy to ignore right up until the moment someone pointed them out. Things like the feel of your tongue in your mouth, for example, how heavy it is and how it presses against your teeth. How often you’re breathing, for another. The need to blink.

Jess pointing out the wolf was a whole lot like that—one second they were laughing about it, and the next they were jumping at each and every tiny noise coming from the trees around them. An owl hooted somewhere in the forest. Pine branches whispered as the wind buffeted them against each other. A drift of snow fell from a nearby shrub with a quiet sigh. A twig snapped.

They filled the silence with the soft, anxious laughter that always seems to follow a jump-scare in a movie theater, everyone acting as though it was the _others_ who were being ridiculous, not _them_.

Josh saw this.

He was in his fucking glory _because_ of it.

All according to plan, baby.

Trying his best to keep his grin to himself (though it was perfectly clear to his sisters at least that ‘his best’ wasn’t really doing the job), he leaned in again, ready to take the teacher’s route and simply _pick_ which of their friends would be going next…when another twig snapped. Well, okay, it probably hadn’t been a twig. Maybe it was more of a branch. Or a _tree_. Or…or maybe it had been something else entirely. It was a good, solid _CRACK!_ that rang out across the clearing, loud enough that more than a few of them jumped in surprise.

“Okay, no, that one was _wayyy_ too close.” Jess moved in such a way as to suggest she was considering bolting…at least until Matt reached over and set a hand on her knee. “You heard that shit, right?” she asked him; then, turning to the others, “ _Right?_ ”

“It’s fiiine.”

“You’re being _such_ a drama queen.”

“Yeah, we’re in the woods. Know what the woods do? Make noise.”

There was more of that movie theater laughter—the sort that said ‘I’m not scared, _you_ are!’—and it was obvious at once that, uh, Jess didn’t take too well to that. Her lip jutted forward in an indignant pout. “Uh huh. Know what _else_ the woods do? Have freaking wolves in them! And mountain lions! And…and _bears!_ ”

In the course of about, oh, point-five seconds, all of Emily’s bravado drained out of her. Ditto the color in her face. “Whoa. Rewind. _Bears?!_ Are there fucking _bears_ out here?!” She whirled towards the Washington siblings, the flames filling her eyes with holy hellfire. “You let us come up here when there are _bears?!_ ”

Beth turned instead of answering, her arms folded across her chest. “Yeah, _Josh_ …what about the bears?”

He didn’t roll his eyes but it was a close thing. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you goons there aren’t animals in the goddamn woods—of _course_ there are. Jesus Christ…that doesn’t mean every rustle you hear is Cujo coming to get you. Need me to list _everything_ that lives out here? Cuz we got…” He slouched backwards slightly, posture all loose and gangling as he counted on his fingers. “Birds, squirrels, chipmunks, deer, possums, Hannah—”

“ _Hey!_ ”

“Yeah, I don’t care about a _squirrel_ coming over here,” Emily snapped (only for Mike to lean over to Hannah, muttering “Wanna bet?” close enough and low enough to make her blush and forget all about Josh’s dumb comment), “What _I_ care about is a _bear_ sneaking up on us while we’re helpless out here!”

That time Josh _did_ roll his eyes. “A bear’s not gonna come up to the fire.” He said it with such conviction that, at least for a moment, the group seemed reassured. Then, crushing every iota of that reassurance into the ground with the heel of his boot, he leaned to his left and asked Sam, “Bears definitely don’t like fire, right?”

“Oh my God.”

“They don’t like fire, but I’m pretty sure they can smell blood from like, five miles away, so as long as no one here’s openly bleeding…” Mike narrowed his eyes and looked suspiciously around the circle. “Okay, wait, hold the phone. No one here’s like…y’know…” His eyes bounced up and down knowingly. “… _y’know…_ ”

“Uh…?”

“Jesus, Mike, just say what you’re trying to say!”

He cleared his throat awkwardly. When he spoke again, he pitched his voice way, way down, as though worried he might trigger a nearby bomb if he said the next few words too loudly. Or clearly. Or at all. “Well I mean…we’re probably fine unless…y’know…anyone here’s on their, uh… _y’know_ …”

The force with which Jess threw her head back was almost enough to topple her from the bench. “ _Mike!_ There’s no way in hell a bear can tell if you’re on your fucking period!”

“I’m just saying!”

“You’re an idiot!”

“They’re like sharks! Land sharks! They can smell even a single drop from—”

“You guys are looking at this the wrong way,” Beth sighed, her breath creating a cloud in the air. “Number one: Chill, okay? And for the love of God, stop talking about periods! We’ve been coming up here since we were kids, and the only person who _ever_ saw a bear was Mom, and I’m _pretty_ sure she’d been hitting the merlot before that. Number two: If a bear _were_ to show up, everyone would be totally honky-dory. As long as you’re faster than the slowest person in the group, you’re totally safe. And since we all know who _that_ is…” She shot a quick, teasing look through the fire.

There was a pause as _everyone_ turned.

Lowering his drink from his mouth, Chris glanced around the circle. “I—hey wait! Why’s everyone looking at _me?!_ Fuck you guys!” The crack in his voice was rewarded by a raucous (if not still slightly anxious) burst of laughter from the group and a hearty thump on the back from Josh.

“Sorry Cochise, them’s the breaks! If you don’t like it, maybe you shoulda spent a little more time actually going to gym instead of learning how to forge all those doctor’s notes.”

He shoved Josh’s hand away. “ _Forging_ …” Chris scoffed, “I’m _allergic_ to exercise, we’ve been _over this!_ ” At that, Ashley laughed, and the worst of Chris’s insult seemed to melt away.

The tension defused—for the time being—Josh set his drink back into the little nook he’d dug out in the snow, setting about checking his pockets for where he’d left his phone. “Know what…” he began distractedly, his words snapping back into their usual rhythm once he found what he was looking for, “If it’ll make you scaredy cats feel any better, me and Thing One and Thing Two over here can set up a perimeter. Just do a quick little scan to make sure we don’t see any, uh…hey Sammy?”

“Mhm?”

“Could you name three things that, if you saw them, would make you think ‘Aw shit, I’m about to go the way of Grizzly Man?’”

“Wow, bad taste much?” she joked, grabbing the ear flaps of her hat to tug them down more firmly as a gust of wind whipped past them, bringing a powdery flurry of snowflakes with it. “I don’t think you guys are gonna find any bear signs.”

“Yeah, but like…what _would_ we look for?”

“I’d really rather not go looking for bears.”

“No one asked, Han.”

Sam rolled her eyes, but she knew the look on Josh’s face. Oh, she knew it all right, and she _also_ knew, in no uncertain terms, that this was happening whether she played along or not. “Um…tracks in the snow?” she laughed, “Scratches on tree trunks? Really heavy branches that’ve been pulled down? Oh! A big jar of honey, maybe.”

Picking up right where she left off, Chris took a disgustingly sticky bite out of a toasted marshmallow, voice made thick by the goop as he added, “Those Charmin bears sure like toilet paper…look for that! Be careful, though…if it’s three-ply, you know they’re close.”

He heaved himself up from the bench with a grunting sound he was way too young to be making, sticking one of his hands in his sisters’ faces and snapping his fingers to hurry them along. As Beth swatted him away, the three of them were the picture-perfect image of sibling impatience. “C’mon, girly girls…we gotta be real hospitable. Gotta make our guests feel comfortable. Up and at ‘em.”

Hannah turned to Sam with a hopeless, helpless look, her eyebrows high and the corners of her mouth turned down; Beth glanced Emily and Jess’s way, rolling her eyes when both of them smirked and twiddled their fingers; and Josh? Josh turned on his phone’s flashlight and damn near blinded both of them by shining it in their faces when they took too long joining him outside the circle.

“Give us five minutes,” he said to the group, “Any longer than that, and we’re definitely dead. Ash’s got my power of attorney, so if any of you have questions about my will, she’s the one you’ll need to forward your concerns to. Spoiler alert, though, none of you are gonna be pleased with what I’ve left you. Not unless you’re _super_ into—”

“We’re coming, we’re coming! Jesus Christ, just…just _stop talking_.”

A hush overtook the three of them as they entered the tree line. It wasn’t like the woods slowly but surely dampened the sound around them, either—it was a goddamn _wall_ of silence, cottony and insulated, almost intense enough to make their ears pop. That wasn’t exactly new (it just seemed to be one of Blackwood’s many exciting features), so it didn’t startle them as they stepped onto the wooded path and the sounds of the fire and their friends disappeared completely.

“I’m not looking for bears,” Beth said flatly, rehashing Hannah’s earlier point, “Jess and Em’ll forget about it the first time one of them looks at the other the wrong way, and—”

From where he’d been leading the pack, Josh rolled his eyes and let his head loll back for a moment, spinning around on one graceless foot to face the both of them. “Of _course_ we’re not looking for bears, you think I’m some kind of moron?” He shone his flashlight in Beth’s face again before she could respond, “Don’t answer that.”

“Then why…are we out here…?” The hesitation in Hannah’s voice had very little to do with the wildlife wandering the grounds and _everything_ to do with knowing Josh. It was fun enough to pull those dumb, harmless pranks on their parents, but like, their _friends?_ Ugh, she was cringing hard enough with this stupid _Are You Afraid of the Dark?_ crap, he didn’t need to add fuel to that fire.

That silence fell around them again as Josh tried to decide where to go from there. When Beth reached over to shove his light out of her face, he didn’t put up a fight. “…so if I ask you guys a question, can you do me one solid and promise you won’t do that thing you do sometimes where you just fly off the handle and freak the fuck out?”

Beth turned to Hannah.

Hannah turned to Beth.

Whether or not twin telepathy was an actual, factual deal or not, both of them knew precisely what the other was thinking with that single glance.

“ _Us_ , huh.” It wasn’t a question. Beth set her weight onto one hip and shoved her hands into the pockets of her parka. “ _We’re_ the ones known for freaking out. The ones who ‘fly off the handle.’” There were no air-quotes to be made (hands in her pockets and all) but boy oh boy did she manage to put them into her voice. “That sure sounds like us, doesn’t it, Han? Overemotional. Unable to control our baser impulses. Prone to making wildly inappropriate spur-of-the-moment decisions. Impulsive.”

Josh scrunched his face up in a grisly grin, humming a low chuckle and crouching a few inches to Beth’s height, sticking his face right in hers before rolling his eyes and straightening up again. “I’m being serious. If _you two_ can’t be serious, then—”

“Just get to the point, Josh, it’s really freaking cold out here away from the fire, okay?”

He sucked his upper lip into his mouth and chewed at it once or twice. The twins recognized _that_ tell immediately, and any vestige of their earlier joking went as quiet as the air around them. Oh, he was _serious_ -serious. That didn’t bode too well.

“Pop wasn’t letting any hunters onto the property this season, was he?” He lifted his eyes from the ground and watched their faces. At first all he saw was confusion—then, slowly, understanding followed.

Hannah didn’t glance Beth’s way that time. “I’m not even sure it _is_ deer season right now, so…”

“Yeah, but…let’s say it was. He definitely said he wasn’t letting anyone onto the property, right? _Right?_ ”

“That last noise was loud,” Beth admitted, looking over her shoulder towards the tiny smudge of orange where their friends were gathered, “But it wasn’t _gunshot_ loud…was it?”

And the Washington siblings, having all three grown up spending their summer and winter vacations up there in Blackwood where hunting was less a hobby and more a way of life, found that none of them were entirely sure how to answer that question.

Using the back of her hand, Hannah readjusted her glasses. “He definitely said that. Definitely. I remember, he promised us that there wouldn’t be _anyone_ up here this weekend except for us. Plus, remember, he got so mad about that guy who was wandering around out behind the guest cabin? I’m _positive_ he wasn’t letting anyone up here this season.” She looked to Beth then back to Josh, her lips tight but not quite what either of them would call a smile. “Positive.”

Slowly, Josh nodded. “Yeah…yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“It was probably just an elk stepping on a fallen branch or something, you know how it goes…hell, it could’ve even been a _moose_. Big enough branch, we would’ve heard it all the way back at the lodge.” As soon as it was out of her mouth, Beth grimaced, remembering just how _big_ moose were.

“Yeah,” Josh repeated, “And none of those things would come near the fire.”

“Or all the noise we’re making.”

“Or all the noise we’re making, sure.”

They stood there in a huddle, none saying what the others were thinking; none wanting to admit that if there _was_ trouble on the mountain, if someone _was_ wandering around on the property without them knowing about it…well, help was a hell of a long way away. The nearest ranger station was at the base of the mountain itself, and the cable cars usually took about ten minutes to chug their way down from the summit. And that was assuming any of them had good enough cell reception to get a call out in the first place.

None of them said this. But a fun little trick the Washington family had was talking _around_ things: They wouldn’t acknowledge the elephant in the room, but they’d sure comment on the stink.

“Good thing we’re not doing anything tonight that might make us jumpy,” Beth said, turning around to head back the way they’d come, “It would sure be stupid to sit around in the dark and like, _intentionally_ scare ourselves, huh?”

“Oh shut up. You’re having a blast and you know it, sourpuss.”

Hannah stuck close between Beth and Josh as they hustled their way back, though she couldn’t help peering over her shoulder every few steps. “If there… _was_ a hunter,” she began again, sensing her siblings tense up under their layers more than she actually saw it, “And they were up here without Mom and Dad’s permission…they definitely wouldn’t want to be seen, right? Like…they’d keep to themselves?”

“They’d be a pretty shitty hunter if they couldn’t keep hidden up here, of all places.”

“Yeah, and like, Dad’s not exactly Mr. Rogers…it’s not a secret he’s not the friendliest of neighbors. Especially when it comes to people just showing up out of the blue.”

She swallowed hard and tried to let that soothe her. It probably _was_ an elk. It probably _had_ just been a branch. That was how life went, after all—the usuallys and the probablys won out most of the time.

The moment they stepped out of the tree line and the laughter reached their ears, the three of them felt like absolute idiots for even _considering_ anything else. By the time they reached the fire, they were laughing too. It all just slid off of them like water from a duck’s back, falling away into nothing. There was no use worrying about noises in the woods—like Josh had said, there were a _lot_ of animals that lived out there!

Besides, in the years and years their family had owned the land, one fact had been made abundantly clear to them: Nothing exciting _ever_ happened up in The Pines. Not by a long shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE, MY FRIENDS!!!
> 
> I learned my lesson this year - no resolutions for me ;) But I hope you guys all have safe, enjoyable NYEs, and that you find a fun way to usher in the new year (and usher OUT 2020) whatever your circumstances may be <3
> 
> See you with a new chapter in the new year...


	4. Sam’s Story: The Tale of the Trail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant tags for this chapter: G...guns? Guns.

“And so the valiant heroes return!” Chris announced in the same unspeakably bad accent he’d dipped into earlier in the night, turning away from the conversation he’d been having with Ashley to watch Josh and the twins crunch their way back to them through the snow. “Final verdict?”

“Yeah, uh, this’ll shock you all I’m sure, but…no bears.”

“Who woulda guessed.”

“Right?”

“I’ll go next,” Sam said once the Washingtons took their seats again, and maybe a little _too_ quickly. Had anyone asked, she would’ve said she was saving the rest of them from some awful nine-way match of rock-paper-scissors, but in reality, she just really, _really_ wanted everyone to stop debating what animals could or could not smell menstrual blood—and by extension whether anyone in the circle was on their period and unwittingly _luring_ said animals right to them.

God help her, there was only so much she could handle in one night and already her limit was fast approaching.

So she set her thermos down near the edge of the fire before making herself more comfortable, rubbing her hands together as she nestled into her seat. “Not gonna brag or anything, but I’m pretty proud of this one…I think you guys might get a kick out of it…” Clearing her throat, she began, “This is the story of—” Then she stopped. “Oh, wait, sorry. What I _meant_ was…submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society…”

“Thank you!” Josh positively beamed at that, his posture going lax as he settled comfortably back into his role as ringmaster of the little show. “At least _someone_ appreciates the experience I’m trying to curate here!”

“This is the Tale…” Sam gestured towards the fire and Josh threw a handful of pine needles into it, creating a momentary flash and crackle, “…of the Trail.”

***

A young hiker looked out over the forest landscape, her breath taken away by its beauty.

***

“Wait. Waitwaitwait…”

Sam let her _own_ breath rush out of her in a whoosh, all of her momentum totally obliterated. “What?”

“The _Tale_ of the _Trail?_ ” Chris drawled mockingly. “Nice rhyme there, Dr. Seuss. Y-y-you seriously couldn’t do better than the _Tale_ of the _Trail?_ Did you even _try?_ ”

“If you’d let me actually tell the story, genius, maybe you’d see why it’s called that—”

“Is there a rail on your trail? Perhaps a rail decorated with a sail? Ooh, maybe there’s a snail wielding a flail while wearing chainmail—”

“A YOUNG HIKER LOOKED OUT ACROSS THE FOREST, BREATHLESS FROM ITS BEAUTY,” Sam said loudly (and entirely without tone), drowning Chris’s voice out with her own.

***

It was early enough in the summer that it still felt like spring even though the worst of the pollen had already passed, leaving everything smelling fresh and green. She’d set out early that morning after loading up her pack way, way before the sun had risen, and as she stood at the very edge of woods, the paved world of the parking lot already far behind her, her mind raced with the thrill of knowing she had the whole weekend ahead of her.

There was a kind of magic that came with escaping the city and getting back into nature, sort of an evolutionary thing, almost. Not worrying about emails or phones or getting work done on time, just being able to breathe the fresh air and listen to the wind whispering through the trees.

She was on her own too, and that was _also_ its own kind of magic. It was how she preferred to do things, honestly, off by her lonesome with no one to worry about but herself. She could take the paths she wanted, _when_ she wanted, and she was free to set up camp whenever _she_ felt like it, not when anyone else started getting tired or hungry. It was that last point that really meant the most, because as she started down the trail and into the woods, she had a feeling she wouldn’t be wanting to set up that camp for a good, long time.

For hours and hours and hours, she made her way through the forest preserve, wandering up and down the more well traveled paths. It was a _huge_ stretch of land, and as something of a hiking expert, she’d made her way through even the most intense of the trails set aside for visitors at least once or twice…enough that she knew each of them fairly well. She’d conquered them all, no sweat!

But this weekend? This weekend was going to be different. Because this weekend, she was going _off_ the marked paths. So after limbering herself up on the trails she knew, she did the number one thing you’re never, _ever_ supposed to do out in the middle of nowhere: She stepped off the path and into the woods.

Now, was that a _great_ idea? Probably not. But again, she was a pro! She had a compass, plenty of supplies, and hey, worst came to worst, she had her phone!

The world seemed to open itself up and close around her all at the same time—the sun went dim beneath the leaves and the air went still, but the chittering of birds and other animals got louder and clearer. Everything smelled beautifully _green_ , and every breath she inhaled tasted crisp. To put it simply, she was in her glory! This was perfect!

By the time the woods grew too dark for her to see the ground in front of her, it seemed a good enough idea to plant herself for the night. Her legs ached in that…sort of _delicious_ way your muscles do after a serious workout, and she was hungry as all get-out. So she pulled her lantern out of her pack, double-checked its batteries, flipped it on, and began setting up her tent. And it was a _real_ tent, thank you very much, not one of those chintzy little pop-tents made out of windbreaker material that you can pick up at the convenience store. She drove the stakes into the ground, set herself up, and when she was proud of her work she _finally_ eased herself down onto the ground and made herself some dinner. And oh, if it felt good to sit, it felt _amazing_ to put some food in her belly.

Once she had her fill, she closed herself up in her tent and shut her eyes. Had she been anywhere else, she would’ve been tempted to stay awake and stare at the sky, watching the stars above her…but the cover was too thick there in the woods, so there was no point in even trying. Before long, she fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, absolutely untroubled by the things she had no way of knowing.

Namely, that all the animals in the forest had gone silent. And when the first rumble of what sounded like thunder rolled its way through the trees, she was completely unaware. It took the wind to wake her.

For a second she wasn’t sure why her eyes were open there in the dark…and then she heard it. A scream. It was a scream! Loud and high and whistling, sounding _nothing_ like any animal she’d ever heard calling out in nature. It sounded, to her at least, like someone shrieking in fear. Or _worse_.

But before she could make sense of any of that or put her finger on _why_ her blood had gone so icy cold, the tent began to shake around her. Confused, stuck in the pitch-black, she didn’t know what to do! She didn’t know what was _going on!_ The weather report hadn’t called for a storm, so for this to be happening out of nowhere just wasn’t right! She scrambled to find her lantern, her hands trembling, but there wasn’t any relief when she managed to turn it on.

There! Right there! Clear as day on the front of the tent…there was a shadow. It was _huge_ and hulking, almost human-shaped, but not quite, and…

_Thock!_

The sound didn’t make any sense until she felt the tent cant to the side.

One of the stakes had come loose.

“Nonono, oh _no_ …” she said to herself, starting to realize what was happening. She wasn’t _understanding_ it, but she was _realizing_ , and having the one without the other felt worse.

_Thock!_

A second stake was pulled free by the wind.

The tent wasn’t just shaking then, it was _quaking_ , the fabric flapping around her, the ground beginning to slide beneath her as she wind caught and pulled at the tent now that it wasn’t so solidly attached to the earth.

She reached for the front to let herself out, maybe to try and drive the stakes back into the dirt, maybe just to see what was happening, but as she reached she saw that massive shadow reach for _her_ too, and so she pulled back with a shout. Her scream was drowned out by the screaming of the wind, making her feel as though she wasn’t making any noise at all—like she was trying to scream in a nightmare.

Another stake popped out, but she didn’t hear it. She _couldn’t_ hear it. She couldn’t hear _anything_ over that howling…but the tent gave a lurch, then jerked, and the next thing she knew, up was down and down was up, and she was tumbling across the clearing where she’d set up camp, the only thing protecting her from the sticks and rocks on the forest floor being the fabric of her tent. She seemed to somersault through the world like that _forever_ …and then everything stopped.

She woke up to the sound of birds singing, and when she opened her eyes, all she could do was gasp.

Inches from her face, only _inches_ , a branch poked through a tear in her tent. If she’d rolled over in her sleep or, God help her, if she’d been thrown even a smidge to the side as the wind had carried her, that branch might’ve gone clear through her head. Through her _eye_. For a long time she could only stare at it, dreading the things that might’ve been.

Pulling herself out of the tent felt somehow like being born again—and not in a ‘metamorphosis’ kind of way, either. The storm and the resulting mud had twisted and crimped and soaked the fabric down into a kind of cocoon, and finding the front opening was almost impossible. She felt around for a while before the fabric gave way, and then she began to squeeze herself out.

The moment she got the upper half of her body out of the tent, the memory of the shadow from the night before came back to her and she froze. What if that thing was still close by? What if it was just waiting for her to show herself? What if…

Sometimes it takes a few minutes to _really_ wake up, doesn’t it? Even if you’ve been scared awake? Well that’s when she _really_ woke up and realized a few things. The biggest being that, uh, that shadow she saw the night before? Yeah, that was probably _her_ shadow. It had looked pretty human-shaped, after all, and hadn’t it only reached for her when _she’d_ reached for the tent’s front flap? Of course it had seemed more sinister during the night…it had been dark and the wind had been _screaming_ and she’d only been half-awake to begin with!

She wrenched herself out of the tent and pulled herself up into a seated position to check the damage. There was no putting it lightly: She was in trouble. The tent was a non-starter, it was full of holes and long, raggedy tears, no doubt left by the branches that had nearly killed her…

“Or the claws of that shadowy thing,” she thought to herself. That actually made her laugh, and oh, she needed that! She _really_ needed it. She really needed it because, uh…well, she couldn’t see her pack anywhere. And there was no sign of the food she’d secured in the trees to keep it away from—

***

Sam sighed as she _felt_ the others’ eyes on her. Too late. She’d already started the sentence.

***

—bears.

***

There was a burst of excited chatter at that, but she pressed right the hell on, not wanting to give them an _inch_ to return to their earlier (horrible) conversation.

***

The problem with not seeing her food wasn’t that it had been displaced by the storm; the problem was that _she_ had been displaced. That was a _big_ problem.

She looked around herself and saw nothing but trees. No signs of her camp, no remnants of her stuff, no marked paths, and worse yet, because of the storm—at least she imagined it was due to the storm—the ground was too swampy and muddy for her to get a bead on what direction she’d come from. None of that would’ve been an issue if she’d had her compass or her phone…but those, of course, had been in her pack. Lost to her. Perfectly useless.

“This is why people don’t go off the visitor trails,” she muttered to herself, but that wasn’t helping the situation and she knew it. Pushing that stupid voice away, she reminded herself that she was a _pro_ , she knew how to find her way around, and she’d probably be back to the main visitor areas in no time. People didn’t exactly fall off the face of the earth in that day and age, so she’d be fine. She took a few deep breaths, screwed her eyes shut tight, and when she opened them again, she felt better. Way better.

After all, the storm had broken and the world was bright with sunlight and new growth and the day was promising to be another beautiful one. So she picked a direction, the one she pieced together must’ve been north, given the position of the sun, and she began to walk, keeping her eyes peeled for any signs of life.

And she walked…

And walked…

And walked…

Walked some more…

And walked…

But the woods only seemed to get thicker around her. The trees felt larger, somehow, and the underbrush was more tangled. It didn’t _feel_ like any part of the preserve she’d walked through before, but she guessed it didn’t _not_ feel familiar either. Birds kept singing and every so often an animal would call out, but she didn’t hear anything to suggest civilization nearby…no voices, no cars honking, no running water. And judging by the angle of the shadows on the ground, she’d been wandering for _hours_.

That’s when fear began to set in, and _really_ set in, at that. It got its hooks deep into her, nearly deep enough to make her freeze up and fall to the forest floor.

She’d told people she was going out to hike, sure, but she hadn’t told anyone she’d be going _off-trail_ …and more to the point, there was no guarantee anyone would really notice she was missing right away. She’d said she’d be gone for the weekend, but if she didn’t show up to work on Monday everyone would probably just assume she’d needed another day to recover from her hiking trip. If she didn’t answer her phone, her family would probably figure she’d just left it on silent or let its battery die—again. That was the sort of thing they expected from her, it was her normal behavior, and now it was starting to feel an awful lot like that behavior might be the difference between her getting rescued and her dying in a cave somewhere in the middle of the—

A glint of something caught her eye, and thank God it did. If she hadn’t been jarred out of her thoughts right then and there, being lost would’ve been the very, _very_ least of her problems because right in front of her, precisely where her foot would’ve landed if she’d taken another step, was a bear trap. The old-fashioned sort, big and nasty, but…clean. Very clean. Polished to a spit-shine, in fact.

She took a step back just to be safe, and she ended up in the perfect position to see something truly terrifying. The ground was _covered_ in traps just like it. They formed a sort of maze, dotting the tall grass and winking in the sun. One wrong move…all it would’ve taken was _one wrong move_ , and she would’ve been…well, she didn’t want to think that way. But still she couldn’t help looking at them there as they were. It was exactly the same as the feeling that had overtaken her when she’d woken up to see how close she’d come to being skewered by the branch. Just…that uncomfortable realization of how badly things _could’ve_ shaken out if she’d been a little less lucky.

But the traps were actually a good thing, she thought, a _very_ good thing! Traps like that didn’t just set themselves up, and they definitely didn’t _clean_ themselves, so there must’ve been someone nearby! At the very least, someone came around that area often enough to use it as their hunting ground!

“Hello?” she called out, hating how small her voice sounded as it bounced through the trees. “Hello?” When there wasn’t any answer she began taking careful— _super careful!_ —steps forward, keeping her eyes firmly on the ground to be sure she only set her feet where it was safe. “Anybody there?” she called, noticing only then that the mud had ruined her clothes, meaning she didn’t stand out against the forest _at all_ …not exactly ideal when trying to alert a hunter that you’re not a nice, juicy deer.

As she walked, something began to come into focus among the scrub. At first she couldn’t really make out what it was, but then the sun shifted through the branches in such a way that it made sense. It wasn’t exactly a camp, but neither would she have called it a cabin. The little building nestled in the leaves was more of a lean-to than anything, just barely big enough for one person, sparse and old-fashioned as the traps, and if she was being truthful…kind of spooky.

“Hello? Hel—”

A noise to her left startled her, and she spun around to see the hunter in question, a woman with windburn on her chin, cheeks, and nose. She stood from where she’d been doing… _something_ , and though she couldn’t quite figure out what that something had been, she prayed it hadn’t involved aiming the rifle she was currently slinging around her shoulders.

“Oh,” she gasped, trying to cover her surprise with a smile. “Hello, I’m—”

“Lost, are you?” the hunter asked—

***

“Was she hot?”

The interruption was so sudden that all Sam could do for a moment was blink. “Uh…” she said, the crackling of the fire doing little to drown out the judgment in her voice. “What?”

Undaunted, Mike leaned forward, one hand dangling between his legs as he rested his elbow on his knee. “Was. The hunter. _Hot?_ ”

Another blink. “What could that… _possibly_ matter to the story?”

“Answer the question, coward,” Beth snickered, raising her shoulders in a shrug when Sam turned her gaze on her. She’d never admit it, of course, but after the conversation she’d had with Josh and Hannah, the mention of a hunter hidden among the trees actually made the fine hair on her neck and arms prickle. She grinned twice as hard to try and compensate. “How are we supposed to get into the groove if we don’t know what she looked like?”

“That has _nothing to do_ with the plot!”

“It’s all about the immersion, Sammy, the immersion!”

“Yeah, what he said!” Mike cheered, raising his bottle in Josh’s direction. They were too far away from one another to actually clink bottles, so they settled for that half-assed toast before drinking.

Sam was only peripherally aware of the apologetic looks she was getting from Hannah and Ashley as she rolled her eyes up towards the sky. She tried to find peace there among the stars and the wavering northern lights. There was none to be found. Of course there wasn’t. She pressed her fingers to her temples and rubbed soothing little circles there in hopes of easing some of her rising exasperation. “No. No, the hunter was not hot. She was a scraggly old hermit, what do you wa—” When the circle all but _exploded_ with groans of disappointment, she dropped her hands. “Oh my God…fine! Fine, sure, she was hot! Are you happy now?” The circle exploded again—that time with cheers—and so she continued.

***

“Lost, are you?” the hunter asked, and—

***

“Who’d she look like?”

“ _Mike!_ ” Unable to hold back any longer, Sam scooped up a handful of snow from the ground and flung it at him; the twins recoiled and shouted, scrambling backwards in an attempt to avoid getting hit.

Very little of the snowball stuck together, but what did nailed Mike right in the chest, leaving a powdery mark over his heart. He didn’t seem too upset. “Like, if you _had_ to compare her to someone, who would it be?”

“Yeah, who should I be envisioning in my mind’s eye?”

“I hate you guys,” she said into the air. “You’re all _literally_ the worst.” She lifted her hands to the sky, clenching and unclenching her fingers in frustration before giving up entirely. The sooner she dealt with their idiocy, the sooner she could go back to her story. “I don’t…Laura Dern?”

Emily’s eyebrows nearly flew off her face. “ _Laura Dern?_ ”

“So that’s what does it for you, huh?” Chris asked, sounding genuinely thoughtful. “Honestly I was sort of picturing Meryl Streep myself, but I guess—”

“ _Meryl Streep?!_ ” Emily sounded twice as stunned as before. Her eyebrows were in distinct danger of launching themselves into the stratosphere.

“I don’t think Meryl Streep’s really the sort to go hunting out in the middle of nowhere, Chris…”

“Oh, and Laura Dern _is_ , Ash?!”

“She was in _Jurassic Park!_ ”

“Ah yes, _Jurassic Park_ , where she played everyone’s favorite T-Rex hunter. Mounted a Pteranodon skull over her fireplace at the end just to assert her dominance over those thunder lizards. God, know what? You’re so right, Ash, that _is_ my favorite role of hers.”

Sam took in a deep, deep breath through her nose. She held it. She listened to everyone add their two cents about _their_ favorite middle-aged actresses. She exhaled. Then, not really caring whether or not they stopped talking, she continued.

***

“Lost, are you?” the hunter asked, and she seemed totally oblivious to how strange the whole situation was, the two of them standing right in the middle of a web of traps, one of them caked in mud and leaves and sweat, the other covered head-to-toe in clear, well-worn camouflage. “Not the brightest idea to go strolling around off the trail, y’know. Not in these parts,” the hunter added.

She didn’t know how to respond to that except to smile awkwardly and hug her arms around herself.

The hunter stared at her for a long moment, sizing her up like she might’ve looked at a steak at the grocery store. It was hard to tell whether there was any warmth in that look, considering the dark, reflective glasses she wore, but it definitely didn’t feel openly friendly. “Lots of things out here in the woods you wouldn’t want to run into,” the hunter continued, acting like they were talking about the weather and nothing else. “Lots of things.”

Her throat felt suddenly dry as the desert. “Yeah, I, um, noticed all the traps,” she said with a laugh meant to lighten the mood.

It didn’t.

The hunter smiled, but that sense of something being off hung tight in the air.

“I got, um, I-I got…” she cleared her throat, that feeling of being parched made _so_ much worse by the feeling of needing to explain herself. It was a feeling she hadn’t had since grade school, really, like getting caught passing notes by the teacher in the middle of class. “Um, sorry. I got seriously turned around by the storm last night…any chance you could point me towards the main road again? My pack…”

It wasn’t like the hunter stopped her—she didn’t start talking over her or anything like that—but all the same she felt like she _needed_ to stop there. A gut feeling, maybe, or just an extension of the alarms blaring in her head that something was wrong there.

The hunter kept on giving her that look. Or…she assumed she did, because…glasses. And when it seemed that look would go on forever, she sniffed harshly and spoke up. “You got turned around by the _storm_ , did you? Huh. Well. Main road’s a ways away from here.”

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

Another sniff and the hunter nodded. “Easy enough to get back to the trail once you know what to look for, though, I suppose.” With that, she turned to her right and pointed to an awful, gnarled tree in the distance. “See that old willow over there?” she asked. “You walk that way and keep walking. You’ll come to a brook ten, eh, fifteen minutes past it. Follow it _up_ , not _down_. It’ll take you past a small fall. Keep on it for roundabouts a mile, you’ll find the trail off to the west from there. You know how to tell which way’s west, I imagine.” She turned back to her and there was a twist to her mouth that she couldn’t make heads or tails of. “Need me to write that down for you, darlin’?”

Normally she would’ve said yes, but those warning bells were still going off in her head. “I think I got it, thanks,” she said instead, “I really apprecia—”

Then the hunter actually did interrupt her. “Know what? Now that I’m thinking about it…there’s no way you’re making it to the falls before dark.”

Again, not what she wanted to hear.

“So how’s about this,” the hunter continued, “Come sit a spell! You gotta be hungry if you’ve been walking all day. Hungry _and_ tired, I’d wager. I know it doesn’t look like much, but there’s plenty of room in my humble abode right over yonder…come get something to eat and get some rest.”

The image that came to her mind was, uh, _every_ fairytale her parents had told her, growing up. Stories about kids getting lost in the forest only to be eaten up by the witches that found them. It was a struggle, but she managed to smile her most polite smile. “That’s so kind of you,” she said, “But really, I’m all right! I’d rather get a head start, anyway.”

Mmm…the hunter wasn’t having it. “It’s no trouble,” she said in that blank voice of hers, “Hardly ever get company out here, and I got plenty of food to go around.”

“I really should go,” she said again, that time starting to take those slow, careful steps around the traps, unsure whether it was more about getting _to_ the trail or simply getting _away from_ the strange woman and her rifle. “Thank you, though! Really! Thank you.”

“Now you look here, missy.” The hunter seemed less worried about the traps, walking with practiced ease across the clearing. “There are things in these woods you don’t want to run into at night. Big things. Things that won’t be half so kind when you ask for directions.”

If there’s anything you learn when trying to survive in the world—especially when you’re a young woman, as she was—it’s that if someone’s intentions seem shady, they usually are. She continued to give her excuse after excuse about why she had to get going, everything just short of “Because my mom said so,” and wove her way through that maze of traps.

She was so sure she’d find the hunter following after her as she made her way out of the clearing, but…she didn’t. In fact, when she glanced over her shoulder, after she was positive she’d cleared the traps, obviously, she was greeted by the sight of the hunter’s back as she let herself into the lean-to.

What she _wanted_ to do was sit on the ground for a second and catch her breath, maybe let her heart calm down a bit. That, however, was a stupid idea and she knew it. What she _needed_ to do was walk. And _fast_. So she did.

“Willow, willow, willow,” she said to herself as a kind of mantra. It marked her steps as she neared the ancient tree and as the lean-to grew smaller in the distance. She let herself rest for _only_ a second once she reached the tree, leaning herself against its trunk to take some of the strain from her legs. It was the weirdest thing, though…the tree was old and undeniably dead, but that was par for the course out in nature. What struck her as weird were the grooves in the bark, grooves that cut deep into the pulpy insides of the tree. At first she figured it had probably been a bear, but…but something about that didn’t fit right.

She wasn’t sure why she did it, but she raised her own hand to the tree, as though to check whether a human hand could’ve left those marks…

Then she snapped back to reality. Right. She had to go. She had to find the brook next and follow it to a waterfall. Right.

It took forever to find the brook. That was putting it lightly, actually—it took forever to _hear_ the brook. The moment she heard that burble of flowing water, her whole body cramped up with thirst. All at once she remembered how long it had been since she’d had anything to drink, and it felt _impossible_ to make it the rest of the way. It was the only thing she could think about, the _only_ thing that broke through the endless thrumming of her tired muscles.

So when she made it to the brook, she didn’t have a whole lot of choice. She fell to her knees and brought her cupped hands from the water to her mouth over and over again. Her stomach cramped and she didn’t like the thought of what might’ve been swimming around in there, but it was cool and refreshing and she couldn’t stop herself until her belly felt heavy and full.

As she stood from the ground, her thirst slaked, everything else slowly came back to her, not unlike what had happened that morning. She remembered the odd interaction with the hunter, obviously, but she _also_ remembered her warning. It would be dark soon, and there were things in the woods—

***

“Like _bears,_ ” Jess muttered.

***

—that weren’t exactly cute and cuddly. She had to keep moving, that much was sure…because already the sun was starting to go down. Time was running out.

It took her a second to recall the instructions the hunter had given her, but the next step was to find a waterfall, so…right, right. She followed the brook, walking with the water as it flowed down towards what she had to figure would be the fall in question.

And as she walked, it grew darker and darker.

And as she walked, all she saw were more trees.

And as she walked, the brook ended.

Not in a waterfall.

In a small pond.

She stared down into that pond and felt a new stab of dread at how very black the water looked. It was almost full dark by then, and there wasn’t time for her to double back. But…this was the way the hunter had said to go, wasn’t it? She’d followed her directions so why didn’t she see—or hear—a waterfall? Or anything else? It occurred to her somewhere in the very back of her mind that…huh. She suddenly couldn’t hear any birds in the trees. Or animals in the brush.

Just as she let herself think maybe she’d try to get some sleep there for the night, she did hear _something_.

A twig snapped.

She whirled around, underbrush crackling under her feet, but already it was too dark to make out much through the trees.

Another twig snapped.

Some primal part of her brain kicked in, making her crouch down despite herself, tucking her body into a small ball among the shrubbery.

Another twig.

Footsteps.

And then, over the low sound of the wind in the leaves, there came a voice. A _familiar_ voice. “Come out, come out, wherever you are…” The _hunter’s_ voice.

To say her blood went cold would be a gross understatement. _All_ of her went cold. She crouched there and brought her hands up to her face as she had when drinking from the brook, only that time it was to muffle the sounds of her breathing.

“I know you’re out there…” the hunter continued, speaking in a sweet, sugary voice that was so different from how she’d spoken earlier. “You can’t hiiide…not from _me_.” And on that note the sweetness gave way to something almost like a growl.

Oh God, oh God, she’d been right all along! Had the hunter purposely done this?! Given her the wrong directions? Told her to go to the wrong way? She must’ve—there was no other explanation!

Curling into a tighter ball, she clenched her eyes shut tight. It took physical effort to keep from jumping each time she heard a footstep…because each one brought the hunter that much closer to where she was hiding. The hunter…and her rifle.

“Not gonna get away so easy _this_ time…” the hunter called out in an awful sing-song voice. “I got you right where I want you, you sonuvapup…”

She swallowed hard, willing herself not to puke up that gritty creek water she’d chugged down before. She had to be quiet. She had to stay calm. She had to.

Step, crunch. Step, crunch. Step…the hunter’s footfalls became more muffled, suggesting she’d passed by.

This was her break. Pulling in a deep breath, she slowly began to creep back the way she’d come, hoping against hope that the trickling brook would cover some of the noise she made. She got a few steps away…a few steps more…and then saying a second prayer that the brook would be enough, she broke into a sprint—easier said than done after a night of little sleep and no food.

“ _Get back here!_ ” she heard from behind her, from much too _close_ behind her, the mad scramble of the hunter’s steps catching up to her.

It was a risk and she knew it, but she jagged off to the left, knowing the hunter was probably expecting her to follow the water. Her lungs were on fire but she promised herself she would rest _later_ as she ran and ran and kept running. Something solid under her foot nearly tripped her and she hopped a bit to keep her balance. Whatever it had been, it was big, and…

It snapped shut just as she pulled away.

_The traps._

Oh God help her, it was one of the _hunter’s traps_.

The image of that awful minefield returned to her and she had to bite back a sob. If she could make it to the lean-to, maybe she could find a gun or something else to protect herself with, but…

Crunch crunch crunch—the hunter was gaining on her. “You stay right there!” she shrieked from the trees. “You stay _right fucking there,_ girl! You got no idea what’s coming your way!”

That made the decision for her.

It was so much harder without the light, but quick as she could, she darted her way across the clearing, avoiding traps as she went. It was like running in a nightmare, hardly making any ground but straining for it all the same. She moved so slowly but it was all she could do as she avoided the outlines of the traps and their teeth.

The door to the lean-to was so close…so fucking _close!_ So she reached for it…

And a shot rang out from behind her.

She screamed. She couldn’t help it, she _screamed_ and huddled herself into a ball again, clamping her hands over her head.

“Not another fucking step!” the hunter shouted, her voice was beginning to go ragged, “Don’t you even fucking think about it!”

_SNAP!_

One of the traps squealed as it bit into something. The hunter? The hunter! It had to be!

But then…

Why wasn’t she screaming?

She turned around, still just shy of reaching the door, and saw a shadowy something caught in one of the traps. A shadowy something that wasn’t the hunter. A shadowy something with blazing eyes and teeth like a wolf’s and huge, clawed hands that were almost human-shaped but not really—claws that could’ve easily torn through the bark of a tree or left a tent in tatters. And when it screamed, sounding just like the wind had the night before, she only had enough time for one thought:

“She told me to go _up_ the brook, not _down_.”

And then the thing caught in the trap lunged for her, and everything went dark.

***

Normally, Sam wasn’t the sort to get any kind of performance anxiety, but she had to admit that finishing her story and coming back into the real world was a trip and a half. Everyone was just… _looking_ at her, and yikes, it was class presentation day all over again. The words, ‘And that’s all I got,’ were right on the tip of her tongue, giving her a much better understanding of how Matt had felt when he’d finished.

“Sam _my!_ ” Josh said, turning her name into two discrete words (‘Sam! Me!’). “Jesus Christ, girl, take a breath and then take a fucking _bow!_ ”

She snorted a laugh and leaned over to meet his offered hand in a high-five, her smile only widening as she was jostled by Hannah and Beth.

“Did we really have to do a story about _giant forest monsters_ while we’re like…” Jess spread her arms wide and just sort of gestured to Mount Washington at large. “Here?!”

“Sorry! Sorry!” she laughed, absolutely not sorry in the slightest. Being done brought a wave of relief crashing down on her, making it hard to pay attention to much else. “Uh, we’re definitely not… _actually_ voting on everyone’s story, are we?” she asked through a half-smile, half-grimace as she looked towards Josh again, her forehead wrinkling when she saw the expression on his face. “God…”

“Still not sure I’m on board with Laura Dern being the number one casting choice here, but that goosed _all_ my bumps, Sam, so I for one…”

Beth cut Chris off before he could keep going. “Pretty sure you got the Washington seal of approval.”

“I mean, not gonna lie, I’m kind of over here feeling like my story was trash compared to that, sooo…” Laughing, Matt waved Sam off as she opened her mouth, reassuring her, “Kidding! Well, halfway, anyway. You got my vote.”

“If I say yes, can we be done with this?” Not waiting for a response, Mike began the arduous process of setting his snacks and drink aside, standing from the bench. “Pardon my French, but my back teeth are _floating._ If I don’t make a stop at the little boys’ room soon, we’re going to have something of a situation here.”

“Wow. What a dreamboat,” Emily said flatly. “I’m pretty sure majority’s voted, so like. Congrats, Sam. Welcome to the annals of the Creepy-Crawly Committee. I’m sure Josh has membership pamphlets printed to usher you in.”

“Pamphlets _and_ buttons.”

After a moment of deliberation, Matt stood too. “Goddamn it, dude, you got it in my head.”

“Ha! You’re welcome.”

“Me three…” Sam snickered, less than surprised when Hannah stood with her. “Well, thanks for your very kind votes, I super appreciate it, but try not to eat everything while we’re gone, huh? We’ll be right back.”

Everyone else seemed content enough to stay planted where they were, a few working on assembling new s’mores, others unscrewing thermoses or popping open fresh bottles. “You guys realize that’s, like, what people in horror movies say right before something bad happens, right?” Ashley asked, tossing Josh a bag of marshmallows. “You should probably cut back on the clichés while we’re out here, just saying.”

“Uh, then…see you guys…soon?” tried Matt, “After…peeing? I guess.”

“I’m not really sure that’s better.”

“Welp,” Josh sighed as the group left the circle and began trundling towards the lodge. “There they go…it’s official…the jocks have forsaken us.”

There was a derisive scoff from across the fire—Emily didn’t even _try_ to keep her amusement to herself. “Uh, and in what universe does _Mike_ qualify as a jock, exactly?”

A grade school ‘oooh’ rose from the peanut gallery, and Mike, still within earshot as he brought up the rear of those heading for the lodge, stopped on a dime to defend himself. “Beg pardon?” he said dryly. “Just _look at me!_ ” He took a moment to strike a pose, gesturing to himself as though he were the most expensive prize up for grabs on a game show. “Of course I’m a jock!”

Face lit by the dull glow of her cellphone as she scrolled through her Insta feed (or _tried_ to, given the shaky reception out there, sitting so far away from the lodge’s hotspot), Emily simply asked, “What sports do you play again, Michael?”

The lovely-assistant waving stopped. “I’m _totally_ a jock, Em.”

She didn’t look up from her phone. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m a fu—look at this sick physique!” Mike grabbed at his sweatshirt to yank it up by the hem…then realized how many layers he was wearing under it. After a frankly ridiculous few seconds of scrambling, he managed to pull everything up to reveal his abs to the lot of them. “You show me a non-jock with a six-pack like this!”

Though Emily remained unmoved, _Jess_ turned around, giving him a good once-over. She playfully bit her lower lip as she ogled him, but when her eyes finally made their way up and up and up to his, there was only more teasing there. “Oh my God. Your face is _so_ red right now…how hard are you _flexing?_ ”

“Yeah Mike,” Beth chimed in, “Take a breath, my guy.”

He groaned, yanking his sweatshirt back down to cover himself. “Forget you shitheads,” he muttered, hustling to join the others. “I’m _so_ a fucking jock…”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Emily called over her shoulder, still smirking to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are in the new year!!! I hope the first few days of 2021 have treated you well so far! <3


	5. Interruption #2: The Jocks Go For a Walk

The good thing about the lodge was that there were about twenty bathrooms in it, meaning it didn’t matter _how_ many people were visiting because the toilets and showers were plentiful.

The bad thing about the lodge was that there were about nineteen bathrooms in it that no one ever wanted to _use_ , meaning it didn’t matter how many people were visiting because there would always be a fight (or, God help them, a _line_ ) for the third floor’s master bathroom.

Hannah didn’t get it. Like, okay, it was probably the _biggest_ of the bathrooms, but the nicest? The most comfortable? Yeah, she wasn’t buying that. Plus, it was _right_ next to _her_ bedroom, of all places, and that just made things weirder. No one ever scrambled to use the bathroom by Beth’s room! Or Josh’s! Ugh. Whatever.

She blew a raspberry into the air and hunched over the railing. The lenses of her glasses fogged for a moment then cleared, and she simply let herself unwind in the momentary quiet she’d found there on the front porch.

The one benefit of everyone _insisting_ on using that one bathroom? Well it meant she had her pick of the others! … _and_ that she could maybe squeeze in a little alone time before hustling back to the fire and dealing with Josh being…Josh.

These get-togethers were always (read: usually) super fun, but man oh man, at a certain point her batteries just ran out. Between adjusting to the altitude and the unchecked chaos of Josh’s dumb _Are You Afraid of the Dark?_ idea, Hannah had a pretty good sense that said moment of burnout was right around the corner.

“See anything cool?”

She didn’t lift her head from where it rested on her arms, but she turned to offer Matt a doubtful smile. “Cool?” she asked, “Cool like how?”

“Cool liiike…” he leaned next to her, setting his arms on the railing in much the same way, “…a fox eating a rabbit?”

Hannah pulled a face. “Oh, ew.”

“No? What about…a rabbit eating a fox? That’d be pretty sick.”

A laugh just a bit too close to a snort burst out of her at _that_ mental image. “Also no, sorry.”

Matt made a low, contemplative noise as he scanned the property, bobbling his head from side to side. “No, huh? Hmm…oh! How about an _owl_ eating a fox, then?”

She reached over and nudged his arm, and though the fabric of his letterman jacket was solid enough to cushion the impact, he still pretended to rock on his feet. Hannah laughed, “Your idea of ‘cool’ is sort of predictable. And really kinda gross.”

“Aw man, bummer.”

“Don’t let Sam catch you talking about wanting to see that stuff,” she warned, only kind of joking. “You know how she gets about the circle of life, sometimes.”

“ _Wanting?_ ” That time it was Matt’s turn to laugh. “I don’t think I said I _wanted_ to see that stuff, did I? Just said it’d be _cool_.”

“Same thing.”

“Not _really_.”

Despite her alone time being interrupted, Hannah couldn’t help but smile; of all the people to join her out on the porch, she was glad it was Matt. Had it been Sam, she knew there’d be no chance of getting an actual answer to the question she was about to ask. And had it been _Mike_ …well…if it had been Mike, she would’ve been too nervous to ask it in the first place. But Matt was a sweetie, an all around good sport, and she knew he’d be straight with her. “Thanks, by the way,” she began, figuring she’d ease him into it instead of diving in headfirst, “For volunteering to go first.”

He waved one of his hands as if to say ‘aw shucks.’ “It really wasn’t a big deal…figured someone had to go, right?”

“Yeah, well…” Another raspberry. “Still. Thanks. Your story was fun—”

“Oh yeah? Glad to hear it!”

“—other than the dead body goo. I probably could’ve done without the dead body goo.”

Matt chuckled and lowered himself a bit further, almost perfectly matching the way she was leaning. “I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Promise! No more dead body goo.”

“Thanks. But like…this whole thing is just…” Much as she didn’t want to, Hannah found herself looking at him, searching his face. “…it’s really, really, _really_ stupid, isn’t it? Telling stories around a campfire? Expecting everyone to just…go along with it?”

“Nooo…” Matt said, though his face told a slightly different story. He shrugged a moment later, cowed by the hopelessness of her expression. “It’s…maybe it’s _a little_ stupid.”

Hannah hung her head. “ _God_ …”

“But I mean, stupid in a _fun_ way, though? It’s—”

“One time, y’know? I just wish we could hang out _one time_ without Josh doing something stupid like this. In front of _everyone_.” Her cheeks were hot with what could’ve been frustration but was almost certainly humiliation. “It just makes me so tired…it’s like he _wants_ people to just think of us as the horror movie family and nothing else. Like that’s the _only_ thing we have going for us.”

“Hey. _Hey_.” He stood straighter then, setting a hand between her shoulder blades. “Han, I’m pretty sure the only person on Earth who thinks of you guys as _just_ ‘that horror movie family’ _is_ Josh, okay? And like—”

“Are you crazy kids _smoking_ out here?”

Confused more than anything else, both of them turned to watch as Mike waltzed out of the front door to join them on the porch. For half a second they looked between each other, almost as though wondering if the other _had_ been smoking and they had somehow missed that fact.

“N…no?” It felt like a trick question to Matt, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what the punch line was meant to be.

Mike’s easy grin faltered for a beat, only for it to reemerge after he gave the two of them a quick once-over. “Huh…weird,” he said, mostly to himself, “I coulda sworn I caught a whiff of stogie smoke for a sec there—”

“ _Cigars_ , man? Really?” Matt gestured towards Hannah briefly, “How long have you known us? Are we a cigar crowd, here?”

He held his hands up defensively, “Look, I’m just reporting on the story as it develops. It’s why I asked! Night’s been bizarre enough already, it sorta made sense in my head that maybe the next step into the Twilight Zone _would be_ stogie-related, y’know? What could brighten this night further than all of us clamping cigars between our teeth like old-timey mobsters, huh? Couldn’t make shit _dumber_. Jesus, is this whole story time deal a load of shit or what?”

If such a thing were possible, Hannah hung her head even lower.

Matt only barely restrained his groan. “Thanks for that,” he said under his breath.

Mike heard none of it. “I dunno about you guys, but I for one _definitely_ came all this way just…hoping—no, _praying_ —that I’d get to spend at least one night freezing my cajones off while making shadow puppets. Honestly, this has just been a dream come true so far.” He set his elbows down on the railing to Matt’s other side, looking out across the mountain. “Ah well. I can adapt. I don’t want to go spoiling anything, but I’ve got quiiite the story brewing in this ol’ noggin…ooh yeah. So!” He let his hands dangle in the air. “See anything cool out here? Like…uh…a bear eating a fox or something?”

Since it was obvious Mike wasn’t seeing (or caring about) Hannah’s mortification, Matt took it upon himself to answer, opening his mouth…

And then freezing.

For a long moment he simply stood like that, his hand on Hannah’s back, his head turned towards Mike, but his eyes…his eyes were still on the forest. When the strain became too much, he slowly angled himself away from Mike. His palm slid off of Hannah’s coat.

“Whoa,” Mike said a second later, proving he was in fact seeing the same thing. “The fuck is that?”

“Right?”

“What?” Hannah raised her head, something about the guys’ tones jarring her out of her impromptu pity party. When she saw what they were looking at, she pulled in a tiny gasp. It was all she could manage.

Something was watching them from the woods.

At that distance it was impossible to make out a shape, especially given how dark the tree line was, heavy with the branches of ancient pines and spruces having long grown fat and verdant as though to spite the cold. But they could still see the _eyes_ , big and bright, glowing with the sickly sheen of something caught on a trail cam in the middle of the night. It didn’t seem to blink. It just…stared.

Had any of them thought it prudent to exchange notes in that moment, they would’ve been comforted to know they were _all_ feeling the same icy pang of dread stabbing into their softer bits. As it stood, it was hard enough to just, well… _stand_ , watching the eyes as the eyes watched them.

“It’s, uh…” No one was more surprised than Mike himself when his voice came out so soft and tentative. He sounded more than just a little like a kid trying to keep his nerve as he walked past a graveyard. “It’s probably a deer, right?”

Hannah was hardly an animal expert, but something from science classes long-since past itched at the very back of her brain. It took her a second, but then it slotted into place. “No,” she said slowly, wanting to shake her head…and finding it impossible to so much as twitch. “It’s a predator.”

“ _What?_ ”

Her tongue felt dry. It seemed to stick to the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t exactly explain _why_ —there were, as Josh had so kindly reminded them all earlier, a lot of animals up there in Blackwood—but if she had to guess, it was probably that she’d never been this _close_ to any of the nocturnal denizens of her family’s vacation home. The fact that it wasn’t blinking didn’t help matters.

“Predators have forward-facing eyes…like us,” she said, “Prey animals’ are more spaced apart, like, on the sides of their heads. Think about, um…rabbits? Or…squirrels?”

“Or chameleons,” Matt added, his voice a dry whisper.

There was silence for a moment. Then, deadpan, “ _Chameleons_.” Mike tried to turn towards Matt and found, for whatever reason, he couldn’t. Oh, he didn’t like that. Not one bit. “Thank God you’re handsome, man,” he said flatly, all the while wondering whether _this_ was what people meant when they used the phrase ‘scared stiff.’ “Life might be a _lot_ harder for you otherwise…”

The jab rolled off him without registering. “Bear?” Matt asked.

“Too low to the ground, don’t you think?” Hannah breathed it more than actually saying it. “Even if it was on all fours, that’s still awfully low…”

“Wolf? Coyote?”

“I don’t…I don’t know…? I kinda feel like—”

The front door banged open behind them and the spell was broken: Mike whirled around, Matt gasped, and Hannah _screamed_. That wasn’t the worst of it, though.

“Hey, why are you guys—” Sam began, only to stare wide-eyed as Hannah and Matt nearly collapsed, both of them holding each other up.

“Holy shit,” Matt said and just kept saying, “Holy shit, holy shit, holy sh—you _saw that_ , right?!”

One of her hands clutched his arm with all her might, but the other pointed, gesturing madly towards the woods. “It-it-it-it-it—” her tongue moved on its own, none of the right sounds coming out of her mouth.

It was only then that Mike turned back around, nearly launching himself off the porch through the sheer force with which he leaned over the railing. “Where’d it _go?!_ ” he asked when he saw the eyes were gone.

Standing in the doorway, utterly lost and perfectly confused, Sam was left to blink. “Uh…where did… _what_ go?”

“It-it-it,” Hannah continued to stammer. She got a hold of herself after sucking in a deep breath, tearing her eyes away from the forest and turning it instead towards Matt, her eyes huge behind her glasses. “It _climbed?!_ ”

He nodded—slowly at first, then much, much quicker. “That was…crazy fast. _Way_ too fast to be a bear…almost like it was freaking… _flying_ up into…it just like… _shot_ into the branches…”

Looking between the three of them in much the same way a teacher might regard a cluster of misbehaving preschoolers, Sam finally joined them on the porch. She didn’t lean over the rail like Mike did, instead folding her arms over her chest and peering out in the general direction of the trees, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet to get a better view. “You guys saw an animal, I take it?” A smile crept its way across her face. Oh, they were spooked, no doubt about that. She was sure Josh would be positively delighted if (well, _when_ ) he caught wind of this. “We _are_ out in nature, you know.”

“This thing was _huge_ , Sam,” Matt said, turning her way once he was sure Hannah had found her footing. “Like, gigantic. Its freaking _eyes_ …”

Her forehead creased, not with doubt or suspicion…but with something closer to pity. Maybe ‘spooked’ didn’t really cover it; they were actually _scared_. “Well, it’s up in the trees now. Far, far away from you guys. C’mon…if you saw it scramble up that fast, then it was probably just a raccoon—”

“Big fuckin’ raccoon,” Mike cut in, “Fuckin’ _unit_ of a raccoon. A big ol’ boy.”

What Sam _wanted_ to do was reach up and rub at her temples like an exhausted parent giving up on talking their kid down from a nightmare. She didn’t do that, though. She reached out a gloved hand to take Hannah’s hand in hers, then grabbed the back of Mike’s jacket with the other. “Okay,” she sighed, leading their little recess chain back into the lodge before closing and locking the front door behind them. She pivoted the group to guide them towards the back door, shaking her head all the while. “Everyone stay close as we head back, okay? I’ll protect you from the big, scawy waccoons…”

Much to her surprise, none of them complained. Much _less_ to her surprise, no raccoons (freakishly large or otherwise) leapt out to attack them as they made their way to the fire.

 _Just another trip to the Pines,_ she thought to herself, _Another glorious trip to beautiful Blackwood Pines._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my friends - I keep hoping that one of these days I'll be able to drop the sign offs that go to the tune of "I sure hope you're hanging in there during these wildly unpleasant historical events we're all living through," but it seems like today, unfortunately, isn't that day.
> 
> I know I joke a lot about just throwing words into the void, but I really do want to take a moment to say that during the past year or so, writing this stuff has ABSOLUTELY been my favorite escape from everything that's been thrown our way, and watching you guys react is always, always, ALWAYS a bright spot in my day, and it's always my hope that in distracting myself by writing this stuff, I can maybe give you guys a bit of a distraction too. 
> 
> So as always, thank you a hundred million times over for taking the time to read my work, thank you for chatting with me and for sending me prompts during the weekend, thank you for making me smile on the days where smiling is, uh, /difficult/, thank you for all of that and more. We're experiencing some really weird (and often incredibly unpleasant) times right now and have been for some time, and from the bottom of my heart I just want to make sure all of you out there know that I am so, so, SO thankful and grateful for each and every one of you.
> 
> <3 Please take care of yourselves and each other, be kind to yourselves, and remember there's no shame in taking a break or logging off to find a moment of quiet for yourselves. <3


	6. Hannah’s Story: The Tale of Hungry Helena

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant tags for this chapter: Mentions of cannibalism, spiders, bullying/hazing

“You guys get lost or somethi—uh, is there a reason you’re all holding hands like you’re on a fieldtrip to the art museum?”

“Maybe I’m just irresistible,” Sam joked, twisting this way and that to get the others (but mostly Hannah) to unlatch from her once they’d reached the quote-unquote safety of the fire again. “These guys saw a big, bad raccoon in the woods, and—”

“Wasn’t a raccoon,” Mike said stiffly as he took his seat.

“Fine. Sorry. They saw a big, bad _possum_ in the woods—”

Their earlier sniping at one another forgotten (and oh, how quickly the tides turned with the two of them), Jess and Emily leaned forward in perfect unison, looking from Matt to Mike before finally resting their shared attention on Hannah. “Was it a bear?!” Jess asked, her emphasis making it come out ‘bay-err.’

“No, no, nope, we’re not getting on the bear thing again.” Before any of them could snap at him for interrupting, Chris did what he did best—he said something absolutely stupid. “Honestly, the more I’ve been thinking about it, the more it seems to me that the animal _most_ likely to come lumbering out of those woods to attack us is a _yeti_ , and I’m _pretty sure_ you know when one of _those_ bad boys is headed your way.”

Sam’s eyes rolled to Emily and Jessica in a look everyone recognized instantly. ‘Are you proud of yourselves?’ that look asked, ‘Do you see what you’ve done?’ “Well whatever it was…it’s gone now, so I think we should just—”

Ah, but the ball had been set in motion. It was, as the kids say, rolling. “Wait, hang on…is it offensive to refer to a yeti as an animal?” Chris asked, aiming the question _mostly_ towards Josh and Ashley.

“I guess that depends,” and of course Josh was immediately invested in the bit, why wouldn’t he be? “Are we talking a full yeti here, or a sasquatch?”

“Pretty sure there’s not a difference, dude.”

“Mmm…I’m less sure.” Ugh. And there went Ash, joining in. There were so few voices of reason in the group that losing Ashley to their idiocy felt like a physical blow to Sam’s gut. “I think whether you have a yeti or a sasquatch depends on what sort of biome you’re in…because think about it, there are also similar stories about things called skunk apes, and yowie, and grass…something…men? And then Bigfoot, obviously…so maybe we’re talking same species but different breeds? Like, different environmental adaptations.”

“That’s not the question, though. The question is ‘are they animals?’”

“Well _yeah_. Of course they’re animals. _Humans_ are animals, so really—”

“Hannah, we all decided you’re going next,” Beth said, kindly putting the rest of them out of the misery of listening to the yeti discussion.

Startled, she whipped her head towards her sister, her eyebrows drawn high with betrayal. “Me?! But I—”

“That’s what happens when you leave the circle, Han. Decisions get made.” Beth patted her on the shoulder (a gesture that was very little comfort and _all_ sibling mockery) and then sat back to make herself cozy. “C’mon, you’ll be great!”

When she turned her helpless gaze on Sam, she shrugged. “It’s fun once you get into it?” she tried, “If you go now, you can just relax for the rest of the night.”

“I…” Hannah looked around the circle. Her confidence wasn’t exactly, uh, _bolstered_ as she saw Josh, Chris, and Ashley still having their spirited conversation, nor did the bored expressions on Emily, Jess, and Mike’s faces help. Matt offered her a double thumbs-up though, and so she made herself smile and clear her throat. “Okay, here…here goes nothing, I guess,” she half-mumbled before raising her voice. She rushed through Josh’s stupid intro as quickly as she could, feeling the tips of her ears burn as she did so, “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society or whatever…I’m going to be telling you the Tale of Hungry Helena.”

As though she’d uttered the secret phrase that activated him as a sleeper cell, Josh straightened up in his seat, his interest in yeti subspecies abandoned without a second thought. “Oh man, you’re going with that old chestnut, huh?”

“Josh. It’s my turn.”

“I know, I know…” he bent down and scooped up some pine needles, throwing them into the fire as was the custom. “Just saying, that’s sort of an old family classic there, isn’t it? You better blow the dust off that bad boy before starting.”

“The house at the end of Romero Street…” Hannah began, staring just to the side of the fire so she wouldn’t have to look at any of the other’s faces but also wouldn’t run the risk of burning her retinas. “…was haunted.”

*** 

The house at the end of Romero Street was haunted—everybody knew that. And not haunted in the way where it just looked shabby and rundown so people would point and say “I bet there are ghosts in there” when they drove by, either. It _was_ shabby and rundown, and people _did_ point and say that they bet there were ghosts, but it wasn’t _just_ that…because the house at the end of Romero Street was where a very, very messed up woman used to live, and even though she and her family hadn’t lived there for a long, long time, neither had anyone else, so in a way they definitely still owned it.

That’ why she didn’t want to go with the rest of them. Her friends were all so excited about the story they’d have to tell at school on Monday, but she was…less convinced.

She stood on the sidewalk near the very end of the craggly and uneven driveway, almost hugging herself but not really. It wasn’t hard to see she was the only one there who wasn’t feeling the whole thing, and she didn’t want to give her friends more ammunition to make fun of her than they already had. But as she looked at the house with its broken windows and its hanging shutters, her stomach turned into a whirlpool.

It was a rite of passage at school—every so often, a group of seniors would sneak onto the property and spend a night in the house. If they didn’t get busted for trespassing, they’d come back with stories about all the creepy things that had happened during the night, the noises they’d heard, the shapes in the windows, the bloody handprints that would appear on the walls…but mostly…mostly they’d talk about Hungry Helena.

Way back when, there had been a family living in the house there at the end of Romero Street, and while no one ever really knew what was _wrong_ with them, they couldn’t really _forget_ them, either. Well…they couldn’t forget the grandmother. At least, that’s who everyone _assumed_ she was: the grandmother. She was unbelievably old, with skin like tissue paper and eyes that were filmy and almost the color of old milk. Her teeth were just a little too big for her face and way too straight to be anything but dentures, but they were covered in awful yellow-brown stains. Her name was Helena, and she _loved_ children.

The rest of the family hardly ever went outside, and they definitely never talked to the neighbors, but _Helena_ did. She would sit out on the porch and talk to all the kids as they walked by, smiling and offering them treats. Fresh-baked cookies, a cold drink…grandmotherly stuff, you know. And sometimes the kids would talk to her, too. Sometimes they’d go into the house to get a plate of those warm, gooey cookies.

And sometimes—not always, but _sometimes_ —they’d even come back out.

“Hey,” one of her friends said, “C’mon, if we stay out here, the neighbors are absolutely gonna call the cops on us, so let’s go!” And the rest of them bustled by her, giggling and talking and shoving each other to keep from being the very first person to cross the threshold.

She felt herself become the unwilling leader of the group as the rest of the girls pushed her up to the front like a bunch of salmon swimming upstream, and as she heard the porch steps squeak under her feet and then felt the old wood of the porch sort of bow under her weight, she realized for the very first time that there was…absolutely no getting out of this now. She could bolt, and she _wanted_ to, but there was no way the others would let her make a break for it.

This was happening.

She’d heard the stories that other kids had told over the years, so she thought she knew what to expect from the night. Usually they’d try to poke at the ‘ghosts’ as much as possible, bringing things like Ouija boards or playing games like Charlie Charlie, being sure only to ask the very _worst_ questions. Questions about the kids who _didn’t_ come back out of the house. Questions about the back room where Helena had slept. Questions about witchcraft and bodies buried under the floorboards. Questions about the taste of human skin.

As the legend went, a handful of kids had gone missing from the town back then in the 50’s, and even though those were still the days where the police shrugged and said “Well, maybe they ran away,” when a missing person was reported—

***

“The _40’s_ ,” Beth said, speaking over her. “I’m pretty sure it was the 40’s, right?” At that she turned to Josh, who nodded sagely before pausing, squinting his eyes in thought…and then shrugging. “I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be the _40’s_.”

Hannah didn’t say anything. Instead she simply turned to Beth and stared at her, her mouth a flat slash of displeasure, her eyes boring into her face like drill bits.

Snorting a laugh through her nose, Beth held both her hands up in surrender. “Sorry! Just…pretty sure that when Dad tells it—”

“Well Dad’s not here,” Hannah muttered in a low hiss, doing her best to keep her voice low and her mouth still, such that the others around the fire wouldn’t hear her (or at the very least catch wise to her mortification at being corrected). “ _Will you just let me do this?_ ”

The other two Washington siblings exchanged a knowing look—‘Hoo boy,’ that look said—and then bowed their heads and waved their arms as obnoxiously as they could, signaling that she was free to keep going.

…at least until she messed the story up again.

***

Back then, people didn’t take missing persons cases that seriously. This was the day of people _actually_ running away to join the circus and stuff, so when the first few kids disappeared, not a whole lot of people cared. It sounds awful to put it that way, but it was true—they didn’t really care.

But then more kids went missing…and more. Not a lot, not like twenty of them, but enough that the town couldn’t ignore it anymore. And before long, they started to notice a pattern: The kids who went missing had been seen talking to Helena beforehand. A few had even been seen going into her house with her.

When the police had questioned the family, they acted like they didn’t know what they were talking about. But then they began to search the house. Everything in every room was perfectly normal, nothing out of the ordinary. The kitchen was full of dishes and groceries, the bathrooms had clean towels and shiny porcelain, even the attic was neat and tidy. But when they got into the back room, the room that Helena used as a bedroom, they started to notice a weird smell.

Depending on who you’d asked, the story would get different from there. Some people said that the police found that Helena’s room was full of bones from the children, bones that she used as part of some kind of Satanic ritual to keep her alive forever. Some said she was a vampire, and that once they tore up the floorboards of that room they found the dried-up corpses of all the missing children, completely whole but missing every last drop of their blood. But no matter what version they told, most people agreed on two things: Helena had killed all of those kids, and she’d _eaten_ them. Or, like… _parts_ of them.

Stepping into the house, she could smell a whole lot of nasty stuff, but she didn’t _think_ dead bodies were on that list. The place was dark, obviously, the electricity having been cut off when it became obvious no one was _ever_ going to buy the house, and it was damp, so it smelled moldy and old like basement dust.

They all piled into the entryway, lit only by the flashlights on their phones, and for a minute or so they stood there, just kind of absorbing the place. There wasn’t a lot of furniture in the front of the house, not that they could see, anyway, but what little there was was super broken down and rickety, like it had been there for decades.

***

“Well _that’s_ why they’re not selling the fucking thing,” Mike said with a casual ‘am I right or am I right?’ look around the circle. He straightened up and assumed a horrible, wavery affectation that made him sound uncomfortably close to a bake sale mom as he continued, “Oh welcome to the open house! As you can see, it’s three bedroom, two and a half bath, and here’s a lovely pile of termite food to sweeten the deal!”

Hannah did her best to laugh along with everyone else (mostly because it was _Mike_ who was making the joke), but her eyes found Sam’s in a silent plea for help.

Sam’s only answer was a gentle pat on her knee and a jovial roll of her eyes. ‘Keep going,’ she mouthed, giving her arm a nudge with her own for good measure.

***

And again all she could think was how badly she wanted to get out of there. Agreeing to this whole thing had been a mistake…she hadn’t even really meant to agree to it in the first place! When her friends had come up to her at lunch, whispering behind their hands about how the old house at the end of Romero Street had just _officially_ been slated for demolition after being condemned for so long, she’d sort of laughed and nodded along like she always did…but then they’d started making plans for how they were going to make sure they were the _very last_ group to ever do an overnight there, that they were going to go down in _history_ at school, how underclassmen would be talking about them for years and years to come.

She’d said yes…mostly because she really didn’t think they’d ever actually _do_ it. It was…it was just one of those things, you know? One of those things you talk about with your friends without planning on following through, like…oh, we should start a podcast, or let’s make a movie, or that kind of thing.

But there she was, standing right there in the house with the rest of them, shivering against the cold. And there was no going back.

“Okay,” one of her friends, the one who always acted like she was the boss, said. “I think the first thing we should do…” And she took her bag off of her shoulder and opened its front pouch up, holding it out to the rest of the group, “…is everyone put your phone in here so we don’t get distracted.”

“I’m not sure I like that idea,” she said, but everyone else had already agreed and was putting their phones away into the other girl’s bag. She wasn’t surprised—everyone _always_ listened to the other girl, the bossier one, and none of them ever actually listened to _her_. Honestly, she sort of had the feeling that she’d only been invited as a joke, like the other girls wanted to see if they could goad her into it. Being the odd one out in the group was sort of just…how she lived her life.

Still, even as she put her phone into the bag, she didn’t like the thought of not having it on her. Not having her phone meant not having any light, but more than that, it meant if anything bad happened—anything really, really bad—they were going to have to scramble to open that pouch up if they wanted to call for help.

“Now I think we should get a good look at the whole place, don’t you guys agree?” that same girl asked, slinging her backpack back onto her shoulder. “We need to get a good idea of what we’re working with here!”

Again, all the others agreed, so…that’s what they did. They walked through the house, squished together in a tight ball, everyone nervously laughing and even screaming once or twice when a door creaked or a branch tapped on a window. It was stupid, but before too long, she was feeling a little better about the whole thing….after all, it wasn’t like she was the only one who was scared—they _all_ were! So she didn’t feel like she had to worry about them making fun of _her_ for getting spooked. _Everyone_ was laughing at _everyone_ , and it was a little like watching a scary movie, you know, where all the worst scares happen and you jump but then you laugh, too.

They followed the path that they’d heard in all the town legends, checking out the living room, then the dining room, walking through the graffitied kitchen, and even creeping slowly up the stairs to poke their heads into the attic for a second or two. They didn’t stay up there for too long, though, because scary stories aside, there was a _reason_ that old house was condemned, and none of them wanted to fall through the floor or anything like that. And after that, they only had one room left.

The back room.

Helena’s bedroom.

As they crept down the hallway, she found herself pushed to the front of the group like she’d been when they first entered the house—no one really wanting to be the first person to cross into the room. And in the exact same way it had back then, she felt her heart leap up into her throat, her stomach tying itself in knots. The door to the back room was open a crack, showing her a teeny, tiny sliver of what was beyond it, and every step that she took showed her a little more.

“Go on!” whispered one of the girls behind her, still giggling nervously.

“Yeah!” said someone else.

“Do it, do it!” came a third voice.

So even though she was way past terrified, she reached for the door and gently pushed it open a little more…and then a little more…and then, before she could really figure out what had happened, someone pushed her.

She hadn’t been expecting it so she lost her footing, falling into the room and landing on her knees and palms hard enough to scrape them up. She looked over her shoulder in time to see the door slam shut behind her and hear her friends laughing.

Springing back up to her feet, she tried the handle and found it stuck, like someone, or maybe even multiple people, were holding it in place. “Guys!” she called, knocking on the door as hard as she could, “This isn’t funny!”

But they just kept laughing. She heard a scraping noise and couldn’t figure out what it was…until it clicked. It was one of the old chairs from the front of the house. They were locking her in.

She started knocking even harder at that, feeling very much like she was going to puke. “ _Guys!_ ” she said again, feeling tears beginning to spring up in her eyes. “Let me out!”

“Aw, don’t be such a baby!” the bossy friend, the one who had her freaking _phone_ , teased, “Think of the story you’ll be able to tell when you survive a night in…Helenaaa’s rooooom!” And the rest of the group giggled at that, the sound hurting more than the raw, scraped skin on her knees and hands.

Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, she heard what the girl said next.

“You can tell us _allllll_ about it in the morning!”

“Wait, what?!” She tried the doorknob again and it didn’t budge. She rammed her side against the door too, trying to see if that would help, but it didn’t. They were going to leave her there _alone?!_ For the whole _night?!_ That hadn’t been part of the plan! …had it?

With a sinking of her stomach, she began to suspect that she had never been in on the plan. Not the real one, anyway.

“ _Please!_ ” she yelled even as she heard their laughter and their footsteps get more and more distant. “Guys, don’t do this, please!” She pressed her ear to the door, straining to hear what was happening further in…trying to figure out if _this_ was a joke too, if maybe they’d leave her to simmer in there for ten or fifteen minutes and then burst in the doorway yelling ‘ _BOO!’_ and laughing twice as hard…

But then she heard the front door open. She heard it close. And then there was silence. Absolute silence.

She kept pounding at the door, hoping that even if no one was there to hear her, maybe she’d be able to dislodge the chair they’d used to pin her in. She banged and banged at it until her hands were sore and her throat hurt from yelling, and eventually she couldn’t keep it up anymore. If they hadn’t come back to get her out by then, then they probably just weren’t _going to_.

Her panic got the best of her for a second there, and she slid down onto the ground and just cried into her hands, not caring how badly it smudged her glasses. She put her head into her hands and just _sobbed_ , so humiliated that she’d been made the butt of the joke _again_ , and that she would no doubt be the laughingstock of their group for the foreseeable future… _again_.

When she finally managed to pull herself together, wiping her face off with her sleeve, she finally did what she’d been dreading since the beginning. She looked around the room.

The back room, Hungry Helena’s bedroom, a nasty voice in her head reminded her, was…pretty empty. There was a big bedframe along the far wall, and the mattress on it was stripped of any sheets and clearly older than she was, blotchy with spots of mold and…other spots she didn’t want to examine. Or even look at. And especially not _touch_. The only other thing in the room was a huge antique-looking armoire standing to her left, made out of wood so dark that it almost looked black.

Since she was already on the ground, she slowly, _very_ slowly, lowered herself further, peering under the bed. And it without any light, it was incredibly dark in the room, but there was _juuust_ enough light coming through the window that— _the window!_

She got to her feet and ran across the room to the window, the wood of the floorboards awfully springy under her feet. The window wasn’t big, and it was awfully high up off the ground, but if she really contorted herself she thought she could probably force her way through…until she reached up to mess with its latch and her hand sank into a sticky, cottony ball of… _ugh!_

She pulled back as she felt spindly legs crawling up the back of her hand and onto her arm, flinging her arm from side to side and smacking at her sleeve as hard as she could to squish or scare away the spiders that had swarmed her when she’d stuck her hand into the mess of webs. Even when she saw that she’d gotten rid of them, her brain convinced her she was still _feeling_ them, covering her arm with the tickle of all those legs, and blech! She kept flailing her arm around to try and fight that feeling away.

The window wasn’t going to work. As much as she wanted to get out of that room—and wow, did she _ever_ —she wanted to avoid those spiders even more.

As she gave her arm one last look-over, she heard something that made her freeze. It was quiet, and it was quick, but it was there.

_Creeeak._

Every muscle in her body told her to stay perfectly still. That if she didn’t move there in the dark, then whatever had made that noise wouldn’t be able to see her and she’d be fine. But she couldn’t help herself.

She turned. And saw…

Nothing.

“Um…” she said, or at least thought she said, glancing around the room. It felt like trying to do one of those _Where’s Waldo?_ games, spotting little differences, or things that didn’t belong.

It was hard to do in the dark, but the room was so empty that she thought it was probably…well…could that be right? Could it? She squinted, trying to remember, but no matter how she wracked her brain, she couldn’t remember whether or not the doors to the armoire had been ajar when she’d first looked at them.

They were ajar _now_ , though.

For another few seconds, she kept standing there, still as a statue. She narrowed her eyes and focused hard on the armoire, waiting to see if the doors would move. Really, she wasn’t even sure that was what she’d heard in the first place—it was an old house, after all, and _anything_ in _any_ of the other rooms could’ve made that noise. Was she even sure it had come from the back room? It didn’t really make sense that it had…hell, it could’ve been her friends sneaking back in to scare her, and—

Then she heard it again.

And that time, she saw the doors to the armoire move.

They didn’t wobble like you might expect if the cause had been a draft or the settling of the house—they opened another inch or so, smooth as could be, as though someone were pulling them open.

Or _pushing_ them open from the inside.

Time seemed to stop for a second, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t inhale. She felt like she was drowning in the air. Without thinking about it, without worrying about spiders or mold or whatever those stains on the mattress were, she found herself scrambling under the bed like a scared little kid, hunkering down beneath the bedframe.

In a second, she’d probably feel really stupid about being so freaked. Already she could feel something creeping around her leg and she _really_ didn’t want to think about what _that_ might be, but her hands had clamped over her mouth and nose in some sort of instinct. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, but it felt _incredibly_ important that she stay as still and as quiet as humanly possible. That her breathing was quiet. Even her _heart_ felt too loud, hammering against the floor underneath her.

Her view of the armoire wasn’t great from under the bed. She could see the two drawers on the bottom, and the very, very lowest parts of the doors. It wasn’t much…but it was more than enough for her to see those doors open even further.

And then she saw an ancient, gnarled foot step down onto the floor.

Then a second.

Whatever had just come out of the armoire, whatever was standing there in front of her…its skin was so white it almost seemed to _glow_ , the nails of its toes so thick and overgrown that they curled into yellowish talons.

She gripped even harder onto her face, nearly completely cutting off her air supply.

The floor squealed and moaned as the thing, whatever it was, put its full weight onto it, and as it stretched she swore she could hear its _tendons_ creaking just as loudly as the rusty hinges of the armoire had.

How long had it been in there? Had it been watching her the entire time? More importantly, what _was_ it? Was it…could it be…no. Nonono. She didn’t let herself think that.

She was just scared, that was all! She must’ve been seeing things, or her mind was playing tricks on her, or something like that!

Except she watched as the feet took a step, then two, then three, crossing the front of the bed in a slow path. With each step, she could see the dark veins bulging in its paper-thin skin. She could see the callused soles catching on the splinters of that old wood. And she could _hear_ it breathing from above, gasping and wet.

Her eyes strained in her skull as she watched the feet continue to cross the room, walking all the way over to the window where she’d stood only a moment before. They came to rest there for a moment as though their owner was peering through the glass just like she had…and then they turned around and began walking again.

One step, two steps, three…the feet came to rest in front of the bed again.

Whatever it was turned _towards_ the bed, facing her head-on so that she could see those horrible toenails.

Spidery fingers curled their way under the bedframe, grabbing one side of it…and then the other.

Her eyes widened and she felt her heart stop. Second by second, the legs attached to the feet bent further and further down, the hands and arms connected to the fingers becoming more and more visible…and then there was no denying who she was seeing.

And who was seeing _her_.

The last thing she saw was a face with deep-set, filmy eyes the color of old milk above an impossibly wide mouth lined with yellow-brown teeth just a little too big and too straight to be right. “ _Why, hello there, dearie_ ,” said a voice that wasn’t really a voice at all…and then those awful hands reached for her.

The next morning, just as the sun was rising, her friends arrived at the house to let her out. They were still laughing and having a perfectly fun time, having spent the night eating pizza and watching movies and laughing over how _scared_ she’d been. In the light of day, the house wasn’t half as scary as it had been the night before, so there was no pushing or shoving as they walked in and made their way to the back room.

“All right…” the bossy friend sighed, the rest of them laughing at her tone of voice, “Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey, time to rise and…shine.” She’d removed the chair and opened the door, fully expecting to see her lying there on the floor, maybe still bawling her eyes out like some kind of little kid, but…the room was empty.

The group of them looked between one another for a second, trying to figure out what they were seeing. The chair had still be stuck in place, with no signs in the dust to suggest she’d managed to wriggle her way out and put it back. There was a window in the room, but it was very clearly matted over with a huge tangle of…oh eugh, gross, that was a lot of spiders.

“Hellooo?” one of them called, the girls walking carefully into the room. “You okay?”

“Where the hell did she _go?_ ” another asked, bending over to glance under the bed. “It’s not like there’s anywhere to _hide_ …”

“Oh please, isn’t it obvious?” Rolling her eyes, the leader of their little group walked over to the armoire, nodding her head sarcastically towards it. She smirked as the others giggled behind their hands, and in one motion she grabbed both handles of both doors, yanked them open, and found…

Nothing.

Except for a pair of glasses, the armoire was completely and perfectly empty.

And they never heard from her again.

***

“Expertly told, _expertly_ told…” Josh teased good-naturedly, reaching over as far as he could, managing to tweak Hannah’s ear. When he was shoved away, he brought his hands together in a polite gentleman’s clap, a few of the others (Sam and Chris and Matt) joining in.

Frowning as she screwed the top of her thermos back on, Ashley glanced from Hannah to the fire, clearly trying to figure out what she wanted to say. “That was… _way_ sadder than I expected it to be.”

“ _Sad?_ ” Jess asked from Matt’s other side. “How was that _sad?_ She got _eaten_ by an old _witch lady_. There’s nothing sad about that, oh my God?”

Ashley’s face contorted for a second in a smile that wasn’t really a smile, and she forced herself to meet Hannah’s gaze for real that time around. “Well you’ve got my vote,” she said, miming a clap more than actually doing the dang thing, “Scariest story I’ve heard tonight. Um…” Pausing, she glanced Sam and Matt’s way with a sheepish smile, “No offense or anything.”

“Aw man, none taken! What _is_ it about old ladies? Why are they so _creepy?_ ” Matt laughed. He pretended to shudder and stuck his tongue out.

“Thanks, guys…” Hannah reached up to tuck the piece of hair Josh had displaced back behind her ear where it belonged, feeling herself beam with relief now that she was done. “I know Dad tells it better, but…”

“But Dad’s not here.” Beth leaned over until she was all but lying on top of her sister, flashing her a playful smile, “And I dunno…I think I like it better the way you told it, honestly.”

“You don’t _actually_ mean that.”

“I do! Dad spends way too much time talking about the varicose veins. Always weirds me out. Like what’s his _deal?_ ”

“Sounds to me like we’ve got us another majority situation here.” Josh slid his hands into his pockets and leaned away from the fire to let his face cool down a bit. “The Midnight Society thanks you for your contribution, Hanners.”

“Hey, uh, not to panic anyone, before we get going again…I think we have a bit of a snack situation.” To illustrate his point, Mike picked up the empty marshmallow bag and waved it through the air like a surrendering army’s flag.

Mostly under his breath (but not nearly under his breath _enough_ to keep him from receiving exasperated glares from both Josh _and_ Ash), Chris said, “Oh no, not a snack snafu. A _snackfu_ , if you will.” When he caught the way they were looking at him, he pretended to bristle. “What? _What?_ ”

Hannah turned to Mike, the fire catching on the lenses of her glasses and flaring for a moment. “Oh, we should have more…in the…kitchen. Shoot.”

“Why didn’t you guys restock? You were like, _just_ in there.”

“Hey, no one told us we were running low! If any of you had said something, then maybe we—”

“I’ll go,” Ashley said, sounding perhaps a bit _too_ eager to get away from the group. “I need to top up on my cocoa anyway, so…” Without waiting for anyone else, she got up from where she’d been sitting, straightening out her jacket. “I’ll be, um…”

Ah, and there it was—the moment they’d _all_ seen coming the instant she’d volunteered as tribute. Ashley’s voice trailed off when she realized she’d just committed herself to walking all the way back to the lodge.

Alone.

In the dark.

Surrounded by the woods.

Woods that may or may not have been full of bears (the jury was still sort of out on that one), but—if Hannah and Matt and Mike were to be trusted—was _definitely_ full of overly large raccoons. Or like…possums.

“Yeah, know what? I think I, uh…could do with a little leg-stretching myself.” Surprising a grand total of _no one_ , Chris hopped up from his spot as well, joining Ashley with a shrug that didn’t come _close_ to seeming as nonchalant as he’d hoped it would.

The snide murmurs coming from the rest of the group? Not helping matters.

“Okay, _we’ll_ be right back, then,” Ashley said, her relief positively palpable now that she saw she wouldn’t have to go it alone, flashing Chris a wide, appreciative smile before starting down the path.

“Have fuuun…” Jess called after them in a singsong voice that set her and Emily snickering to themselves.

“Yeah, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Cochise,” Josh added.

Chris let Ashley get a few strides in front of him before he spun around to face the fire again, walking backwards so he could make a grand show of waving both middle fingers towards all of their stupid, grinning faces. When that only made them laugh _louder_ , he rolled his eyes and quickened his pace to catch up with her. “Hey, you read a lot of books. Think bears can smell _raging fucking assholes?_ ”

“Oh, for sure.” Ashley kept her arms around herself tightly to keep the worst of the wind’s chill away as they walked towards the lodge, “Even if they can’t smell them, I’m sure they can _hear_ them…” She glanced up to Chris, one corner of her mouth twisting up into a sardonic little smirk. “Think something’ll eat them while we’re safely tucked away in the lodge?”

“If we get _real_ lucky.”


	7. Interruption #3: If the Sculpture’s a-Rockin’…

When he pulled the last of the six-packs out of the very back of the fridge and shut the door behind him, Chris found Ashley still pawing around the cupboards. “Having some trouble over there? You need a stepladder or…?”

“Oh hush,” she said, her voice taut in her throat, unsure whether it wanted to be a laugh or a grumble. “ _This_ is why I said we should’ve just left everything out on the table! There’s no organization in _any_ of these at all…” Her fingers brushed against a box that felt to be the right size, but when she pulled it out, found it was dried pasta. “Ugh!”

After a not-insignificant amount of futzing with it, he managed to fit every last one of the drinks into the cooler. All those years and years (and _years_ ) of Tetris finally came in clutch! What a glorious day. “Here,” he joked once he was finished, kneeling next to Ashley on one knee—not unlike a valiant soldier waiting to be knighted—and cupped both of his hands together to offer them to her. “You need a boost?”

“I can see the frigging shelves, Chris.”

“Well, uh, apparently you can’t, Ash, because what I’ve been hearing for the past five minutes is a whole lot of whining and not a whole lot of graham cracker…ing.” She shot him a cockeyed glance and he sent back a cheesy grin of his own. “All right, all right…you want help?” he asked, taking to his feet and peering over her shoulder. It wasn’t that he didn’t prefer being in the lodge over being in the middle of the woods (he _did_ ), but he knew deep in his heart of hearts that every moment the two of them spent grabbing groceries was a moment everyone around the fire would use to tease them behind their backs. Experience alone had taught him that much.

Ashley clucked her tongue and shut the cabinet, skirting around him to get to the pantry instead. “I don’t need any help, oh my God. Just give me a minute.” And then, proving once and for all that the two of them didn’t just share a wavelength but a whole _brain_ , she added, “Besides…are you really complaining about getting away from the ‘Midnight Society’ for a few minutes?”

“What, you’re not super psyched to trade ghost stories around the fire?”

She snorted as she pushed an ancient bag of rice to the side. “No. Can’t say I am, believe it or not.”

“Guess I figured you’d be all over story time, Miss Not-Now-I’m-Working-On-My-Novel…”

“Um, in front of _these_ people?” Ashley shuddered—actually _shuddered_ —as she dug through the pantry. “Yeah, no thanks…”

“Aw c’mon,” Chris said, setting the cooler down before leaning on the kitchen island. “Your stuff’s totally legit!”

She threw him a glance over her shoulder. It had _probably_ been meant to show some measure of disbelief, but the corners of her lips gave her away. Had it not been so dark in the lodge, the color of her cheeks and ears probably would’ve done the same. “You haven’t _read_ any of my stuff, you dork.”

“I would if you’d _let me_ …”

“Yeah, well…” She turned back to the pantry to resume her valiant search. “I’m totally fine going somewhere in the middle. Statistically speaking, people are like, _way_ more likely to remember the very beginning and very end of a series, and all the middle stuff gets sort of mushed up together…so I’m just gonna go in the middle, get it over with, and hope to _God_ that no one remembers my story well enough tomorrow to make fun of me for it.” She let out a victorious “Ooh!” as she found the graham crackers. Then, as though struck by inspiration, she added, “… _or_ I’ll wait until someone’s story really, really, _really_ bombs, and _then_ I’ll go.”

“With the group we’ve got out there? Gotta be a few clunkers. _Someone’s_ gotta beef it.”

“I sure hope so.” Lady luck must’ve heard her pleas, because lo and behold, there was the bag of mega marshmallows and what was left of the chocolate bars. She couldn’t _begin_ to figure out who might’ve shoved the stuff so far into the pantry (or _why_ ), but she was just glad to find them. Same wavelength, same brain, whatever, Chris’s earlier thought had occurred to _her_ , too—namely that the longer the two of them stayed in the lodge, the worse the ribbing would be when they got back. “Ready to head out?”

“I guess,” he said, putting on a beleaguered sigh as he yanked the cooler off the island. “Fingers crossed Josh eats one s’more too many and decides he’s tired of this shit before either of us has to go.”

She crossed her fingers on both hands before sliding the plastic bag holding the crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate over her arm. “Do you even have a story _ready,_ by the way? Cuz earlier you made it sound like—”

“Oh no. Oh nonono, I’ve got nothing.”

“ _Chris!_ ” She couldn’t help laughing as she finished packing up. “Josh gave us all that time so we could bust out these super impressive stories, and you didn’t prepare _anything?_ Nothing? You’ve got _nothing?_ ”

He waved her off like a mosquito, making a joking ‘pshaw’ sound before snickering, “Oh ye of little faith. Josh isn’t the _only_ master of improv around here, y’know—”

“…none of that fills me with any kind of confidence. I do need you to understand that.”

“I’ll come up with something, is the point. Just because _you_ spent all week practicing in front of the mirror like this is a class presentation—”

“I didn’t…” she paused before she could say what she’d been thinking (“I didn’t practice _all_ week!”), rolling her eyes and muttering, “I didn’t do that,” instead. Making sure to cut back on the mess she made by stepping only on the tiny puddled spots her boots had left on the way in, Ashley made her way out of the kitchen and into the corridor. “Well…try not to be too insulted when your ‘masterful improv’ fails and I swoop in afterwards. Like I said, the second someone messes up, I’m…”

And then she stopped.

It was hard to say what had done it at first, but something had rankled her, ruffling all her feathers in the worst way. There was a split-second where she figured it was the obvious, that sitting around a fire in the middle of nowhere had gotten her spooked…

But then she saw it.

“…you’re…?” Paying just a bit too much attention to the cooler in his hand, Chris hadn’t noticed she’d stopped; he ran right into her back, pulling away with a surprised noise. “You mind?” But she didn’t answer. _That_ didn’t sit well with him. “What?” he asked. And when there was no response, he asked it again, “ _What?”_

Ashley didn’t answer him right away. She stood there, just outside the great room, staring at…well, staring at _something_ with a look of concentration so intense that Chris wouldn’t have been surprised to learn she’d all but forgotten the weight of the bag of food hanging by the crook of her arm.

“What do you think _that’s_ about?” she finally asked, her voice soft with confusion.

“Whaddya mean? What’s—” And then _he_ saw what she was talking about.

…well, he _heard_ it: a low metal-on-metal screech, not quite loud enough to make him shiver, but plenty loud enough to be obvious over the wind whistling outside the lodge.

Chris’s eyes slid up towards the source of the noise, and—lo and behold—there was the perpetrator. “Uh…huh…” he hummed thoughtfully, tilting his head to one side as though it would clear up what he was seeing…which was, strangely enough, the large ( _ugly_ ) sculpture hanging from the great room’s vaulted ceiling rocking gently on its support chain. It wasn’t exactly yo-yoing back and forth, but there was definitely no missing it. That sucker was moving, all right.

“I’ve never seen it do that before.”

“Yeah, me neither…weird.”

“ _Very_ weird,” Ashley agreed, her eyes still glued to the metallic sphere. It seemed to be finding some sort of equilibrium again, albeit slowly, maybe even beginning to stop. “They don’t get earthquakes up here, do they?”

“What, on the mountain? Pfft, no? I mean…” It took some effort, but Chris managed to look away from the ceiling. He was shocked— _shocked!_ —to see that the curiosity on Ash’s face hadn’t been usurped by fear. Yet. “Something probably just knocked into the roof. Snow drift maybe, or like…a tree branch.”

“And you think it would be big enough to move _that?_ ” A connoisseur of paperback mysteries, the wheels in her head were already turning even as the sculpture finally came to rest. “I don’t think a stupid branch falling could cause… _that_. It’s so _heavy_.”

This was what he got. Oh, this was _exactly_ what he got for following after her. He could almost hear the imaginary ‘VROOM’ of her Detective Mode firing itself up now that the chain above them had stopped squeaking. “We don’t _know_ that it’s heavy,” he pointed out, hoping against hope that (as horrible as he felt even thinking it) her intrigue would crumple into her usual run-of-the-mill anxiety soon—that way they could go get warm in front of the fire instead of freezing their buns off in the lodge.

…then again…solving a Nancy Drew-grade mystery, the Case of the Swinging Metal Ball, _did_ translate into more time together, just the two of th—

“Guys! Oh my _GOD!_ ”

Both of them jumped as though they’d been electrocuted, inadvertently banging into each other in surprise. They shared a panicked look before speaking over one another.

“Was that _Jess?!_ ”

“Who’s _upstairs?!_ ”

There was a beat as they processed what the other had said. Then they turned to the staircase.

After another moment, Ashley doubled down. “That was absolutely Jess.”

“Sure sounded like it…” Frowning, Chris walked into the great room proper, glancing towards the side door before calling up the stairs. “Uh, hello? Hellooo? Olly olly oxen free?” When there was no answer, he looked to Ashley and shrugged.

“…I didn’t hear anyone come in while we were in the kitchen…” Her eyes seemed to slide off of the stairs every time she tried focusing on them, almost as though the risers were coated in cooking oil. A sliver of her tongue poked out to wet her lips, and when she spoke again, the fear he’d expected was there, front and center. “…did you?”

He hadn’t. He didn’t say that, though, because much as he wanted to get back out to the fire where there was at least _some_ chance of fending off hypothermia, he realized he _also_ didn’t want to worry her more than she already was. “We were in there for a long time, Ash—”

“Not _that_ long.”

“I—” And then it clicked. Chris’s shoulders slumped and his eyes rolled with the realization. “Motherfu…ugh.” The sting of the group’s earlier teasing still fresh in his mind, he leaned towards her and lowered his voice. “Look. It’s not hard to sneak in here—there are like a hundred doors! Not to mention _windows._ Don’t you think this is just them trying to scare us?” Again, it hadn’t been _exactly_ what he’d been thinking (in his mind, it was about a million times more likely they’d sneak in to try and catch them both off-guard and _laugh at_ them instead of _scaring_ them) but it was close enough.

She mulled that over, her own internal monologue much closer to his than he might’ve realized, and then she nodded. “Yeah, I mean, I guess that makes se—”

Something well above them hit the roof hard enough to thump.

_SCREEEEEEEE—_

In perfect unison they turned to glance over their shoulders.

The sculpture was rocking on its supports again.

“You _GUYS!_ ” came Jess’s voice from somewhere upstairs, and thank _God_ it sounded distant enough to suggest she couldn’t see them, because Chris and Ashley jumped for what must’ve been the umpteenth time, stopping just short of pulling a Scooby-Doo and leaping into each other’s arms.

“Jess?” Ashley called up the stairs before she could stop herself. “This is _so_ not funny! I—” She froze with a grimace, feeling more than hearing the crack in her own voice. “Oh God…that’s _exactly_ what people say in scary movies, isn’t it?”

Once his heart decided to start pumping at a halfway normal speed, Chris groaned, dropping the cooler onto the floor. “Fuck this…” he muttered as he started up the stairs.

“ _Chris!_ ”

“I-I’m not gonna let them just fuck with us all weekend, Ash! If they wanna be assholes, fine by me, to each their own, but I’m not gonna just stand here and _let_ them!”

In two quick steps Ashley had caught up to him, keeping close as they made their way up to the third floor. Barely whispering (but standing near enough that it didn’t matter), she said, “If any of them jump out at me…I think I might literally pee my pants.”

“Hey, when in Rome.”

“That makes absolutely no sense in the context of what I just said.”

“Does if _I_ pee myself too.”

Hunched together as they were, all but folded into one another, the others would’ve had one hell of an easy time making fun of them (if that was indeed their goal) but neither Ashley nor Chris cared too much about that point. Ooh no, not when the lodge was so, uh… _creepy_.

Earlier they’d all been so excited to go out and see the sights, hurl a few snowballs, check out the guest cabin, hit the hot tub, collect wood for the fire…and not a _one_ of them had thought to suggest to the Washington sibs that maybe the power or the heating needed to be flipped on. That meant two things: (1) the lodge was fucking cold, and (2) the lodge was fucking _dark_. Neither made for optimal exploration conditions, but _hoo boy_ the scaring opportunities were endless.

The issue with navigating the third floor was that it was _all_ hallways. Hallways upon hallways, each leading to bedrooms, bathrooms, the library, countless linen closets…and as that realization hit, both of them found themselves wondering why it was they’d decided to go on this little journey in the first place. They could’ve just run back to the fire! They could’ve pretended they hadn’t heard anything!

And yet, there they were, guided by nothing but the narrow beams of their phones’ flashlights.

“Ha ha, you assholes,” Chris called out as they reached the landing. The others weren’t waiting for them up there—a quick sweep of their flashlights showed them that much—and they were met by nothing but closed door after closed door. Still, there was no explaining away the voice they’d heard, so he continued, “Real chucklefest you’ve got going here…”

The ambient creaking of the sculpture sounded so much louder up there. And…and something else, too. If they listened, really _listened_ , that thumping continued too. It was quiet, maybe even rhythmic— _thump…thump…thumpthump_ —sounding very much like…

Uh…well, like…

Footsteps.

On the roof.

“Maybe we should just—”

“OH MY _GOD!_ ”

That time Jess’s voice came through so clearly that they spun around, fully expecting to see her standing there in a doorway, laughing through that wide, picture-perfect smile of hers.

But they didn’t.

“Oh, you have got to be _shitting me_ ,” Chris muttered to himself. The tightly coiled knot of fear that’d been squirming in his gut like some sort of eldritch monstrosity immediately relaxed, the ripple of that body-wide unclenching sending a burst of nervous laughter burbling out of him. “Oh I hate this fucking place. I hate this fucking place with every goddamn _fiber_ of my _being!_ ”

Ashley watched him walk over to the open window and jam it shut, her hands pressed tightly to her chest. “Holy crap…” The laughter got her too, giving all the frantic energy in her belly somewhere to go. “The sound must’ve been carried on the wind…that’s why we could only hear _her_ and not everyone else…”

“Wow, what a gentle way of saying ‘Obviously we only heard Jess! She’s the loudest and most obnoxious of everyone here!’” Chris snickered before craning his head to look out the window.

“She’s not _obnoxious_ , Chris! Loud, okay, but I wouldn’t—”

“Aha!” He smacked a hand on the windowsill, then pointed. “There! There, see? What did I tell you?” He waited for her to join him by the window to continue. “That bigass tree’s leaning up against the lodge! Wind probably knocked a branch loose, it slapped the roof, and voilà! Linda’s godawful art installation goes all _Pit and the Pendulum_ on us!”

Her relief at having a solid, scientific, _reasonable_ explanation for it all overpowered her need to look any deeper into his rationale (or to question when exactly he’d started reading Poe in his free time). Her earlier objection—that it would have to be an awfully _big_ branch to make the lodge shake like that—flew out the window. Uh, so to speak. “Fine,” she laughed, bringing her hands up to cover her face for a moment, suddenly very glad for the darkness, if only so Chris couldn’t see how embarrassed she was for letting herself get so spooked. “That’s just fine. Can we, um, get out of here before, like…”

“The lights start flickering on and off?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Or…maybe the phone rings but there’s nobody there?”

She narrowed her eyes. “…or that.”

“ _Or_ ,” Chris continued, “The walls ooze green slime?”

Ashley threw him a weary look but failed to suppress her giggle. “Sure,” she said, making a point to _not_ mention the blatant SpongeBob reference. “Whatever. Just…let’s get back to everyone like, stat, okay? Puh-lease.”

Without wasting another second, they descended the stairs and grabbed up their groceries again, tacitly agreeing they wouldn’t share any of _that_ little snafu (or snackfu) with the others. Ghost stories were one thing, but the mortifying ordeal of letting others know you’d been terrorized by the literal wind? Now that was _real_ horror.


	8. Chris’s Story: The Tale of the…Ugh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant tags for this chapter: Gratuitous mentions of college, mentions of Classic Creepypastas(tm)

“All right, is that it?” Josh asked once Chris and Ashley shuffled their way into their seats. “We got enough snacks? Our bladders sufficiently empty? Can we maybe be done with pointless interruptions and _please_ get back into this before the sun comes up?” He looked around the group, arms spread wide, but quickly realized everyone was too busy divvying up drinks and s’mores to even glance his way. “…great.”

“Who woulda guessed your captive audience would be more interested in getting drunk than playing along with your _Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark_ shtick,” Sam joked, sticking her tongue out when Josh shot her a wounded look.

“First of all, _Samantha_ , it’s _Are You Afraid of the Dark?_ , not _Scary Stories to—_ ”

Fulfilling her role as bratty little sister, Beth leaned over and raised both her eyebrows, fixing Josh with a stare that was nothing short of devastating. “You get this is why you have three friends, right? You do understand that fact? You saying shit like that _earnestly_ is why you got voted ‘Most Likely to Die Alone’ in the yearbook, your senior year.”

Even Hannah couldn’t resist getting in on that. “Actually, I think it was ‘Most Likely to Become a Recluse in the Woods.’”

“You’re both half-right: It was ‘Most Likely to Die a Recluse in the Woods.’ Now, if we’re fucking _dooone_ …” While the others chatted amongst themselves, Josh turned to his right, flashing Chris and Ashley an expectant grin. “You know the drill by now…leave the circle, come back and take your turn.”

“What? Ugh!”

“No favoritism here, Encyclopedia Brown! We’re a society that prides itself on equality and—”

Knowing full well that Ashley wasn’t ready to have all eyes on her just yet, Chris heaved a melodramatic sigh and jammed a square of chocolate into his mouth. “I’ve got this one. Oh, such a story I have for you guys. A true whale of a tale. A magnificent—”

“Ugh, please don’t tell me we’re giving _him_ the microphone…” Jess groaned.

A lifetime of being the dad-joke guy had toughened him against the slings and arrows of such paltry cafeteria insults, so Chris’s itty-bitty feelings were only sort of hurt a _little bit_ when the circle gave way to groans and guffaws alike, passing judgment on his story before he even got the chance to tell it.

It was in that moment he decided he knew what he had to do.

He might’ve come to this shindig unprepared, but oh. Oh. He knew what his story was going to be _now_.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see how you feel in a few minutes, won’t we?” He took one last swig of his beer and cleared his throat before nodding to Josh. “Because now the _real_ terror begins.”

Emily made no attempts to lower her voice as she murmured “Oh _God_ ,” Jess and Matt and Mike laughing along with her.

“Without any further ado, I submit for the approval of the Midnight Society, _this!_ The Tale of the Male at Yale Who Found the Scholastic Holy Grail, if Only to Wail When He Fail…ed…”

And then, louder that time, “Oh _God_.”

Chris held both of his hands up in an ‘It wasn’t me!’ gesture. “Because Sam’s the only one who gets to rhyme? I think not.”

Sam looked at him from across the fire, her eyes half-lidded with exasperation and (much to her chagrin) wry amusement. “Chris.”

But then Josh threw the pine needles into the fire and the story began.

***

If he spent one more _second_ staring at the screen, he was going to start bashing his head against it—he’d come to terms with that decision about ten minutes ago, and when his eyes dropped to check the time on his phone, well, he found he wasn’t just _okay_ with the idea, he was sort of _excited_ for it. Maybe if he gave himself a concussion, his professor would give him an extension on this fucking paper. Probably not, but like… _maybe_. And sometimes? Sometimes ‘maybe’ is more than enough.

In front of him, the cursor just kept blinking and blinking in the document, smack in the middle of a sentence, and he could even picture it in his mind’s eye. He’d lean back in the flimsy—honestly upsettingly sticky—computer lab chair, get all the momentum he could, and then _WHAM!_ Over and over again until he passed out on the keyboard.

It was the perfect plan. Foolproof, even.

Or at least it would’ve been, had the late-night librarian not chosen that exact moment to come back from getting coffee.

Great. So that was Plan A down. Fantastic. Now the only choice he had was to actually finish _writing_ this fucking paper, and Christ on a cracker, that didn’t feel especially likely. It hadn’t felt especially likely four goddamn weeks ago when it was assigned, and it felt even _less_ likely now that it was due in oh…five hours.

 _Yes_ he should’ve started working on it sooner, and _yes_ it was his fault for procrastinating as long as he had, and _yes_ , sure, fine, okay, it was his fault for signing up for a class that started at seven-thirty in the morning in the first place, but hindsight’s 20-20 and all that. The fact of the matter was…put quite plainly…he was fucked.

He set his head down onto the keyboard and groaned. Then he remembered how many other people’s grubby hands had likely touched that keyboard in the past day and he sat straight up again. His head hurt and his back ached and mostly he just felt like a moron, you know? It doesn’t matter how old you get, there’s something just so _embarrassing_ about missing an assignment. This paper wasn’t worth anything huge—it wasn’t one of those shitty papers worth like forty percent of his grade or anything—but it was the principle of the thing! He wasn’t the kind of guy who just, like, got zeroes in his grade sheets.

But no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t figure out how the _fuck_ he was going to get this done. It needed sources. _Footnotes_. And what did he have? A page and a half of an introduction that relied very, very heavily on double-spacing and a wide array of exciting adjectives provided by thesaurus.com. …and okay, maybe he’d changed the font size of all the punctuation marks.

Maybe.

The TA wouldn’t be able to prove that since they were handing in hard copies and not the actual documents, sooo…who was to say.

Anyhow, as he sat there staring at the screen, it finally came to him: He could _ask_ for an extension, self-inflicted concussion be damned! It wouldn’t get him out of the jam he was in, but at least he could go back to his dorm and get a few minutes of sleep before he had to schlep himself off to class.

An extension…yeah, that could work…that could work! Obviously it was a weird time of night, so if he emailed the prof and made a big fuss about how…how…ah! How some random, distant, far-off family member that he was actually inexplicably super close with and majorly attached to had died suddenly of…uh…consumption? People still died of that, right? Sure they did! All the time, even.

***

“They don’t,” Sam said in a stage whisper.

“No one calls it ‘consumption’ anymore, Chris, oh my God. It’s tuberculosis.”

Chris turned from Sam to Ash and clutched his hands over his heart. “What happened to being nice to everyone? What happened to not correcting them? _Hmm?_ While I’m totally flattered that I apparently have you both here as my official-unofficial fact-checkers, I would like to point out that I’m setting up the character here. _I_ don’t think people are still getting the consumption—”

“Tuberculosis.”

“—and dying left and right while coughing up blood into lace hankies and hiding them in their pockets before any nearby dirt-smudged orphans can see: _The protagonist_ does. See what I’m going for here? See?”

Ashley and Sam favored each other with a look that didn’t even come close to needing words.

***

He was so busy coming up with this A-plus plan to give himself a little more time to get this thing done that he let muscle memory take over. Completely forgetting that he was on a shared lab computer and not his own personal one, he went to save the document and…aw shit, he’d just meant to copy-paste it into an email he could send himself, but…

Well that was interesting.

The window that popped up on screen showed him that he’d successfully saved what he’d written so far not to the desktop…but to a flash drive. Lo and behold, when he scooted his chair back a couple inches and bent down, there it was—a generic little black number sticking out of one of the USB ports.

Tale as old as time, huh? Some poor idiot forgets their stuff in the computer lab. No doubt _someone_ would be missing that baby tomorrow when they realized it was gone. So, being the good Samaritan that he was, he clicked around to check whether it had any identifying info on it.

It wasn’t out of the question to find that someone would leave a file of some kind on a drive like that with their name and email or even what dorm hall they were in, but when he opened that one up, all he found was his paper and one other file. Weird, though, it wasn’t any sort of word doc…it was a .jpg.

A mysterious .jpg on a mysterious flash drive in the middle of the school’s computer lab, huh? Well that certainly wasn’t ominous or concerning in any way, shape, or form, was it? There could be _anything_ in that file! Porn. A cursed image like Smile Dog—

***

“Wait, waitwaitwait…what the _hell_ is ‘Smile Dog?’” Matt asked.

Chris only just barely answered, shooting a flippant “Not important,” his way as he continued. “Also, don’t look it up.”

Josh leaned in closer to the fire, meeting Matt’s gaze and nodding pointedly. ‘Look it up,’ he mouthed, and then flashed him a single, ominous thumbs-up.

***

It could’ve been some weird, fucked up gore shit. It could’ve…well, okay, mostly his fear was that it was going to be porn. Like the _weird_ kind. But you know what they say…curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back, sooo…he opened it.

The file popped up on screen. And there he saw…

Absolutely nothing.

Okay, not nothing-nothing—there was _something_ there. Sort of. The image seemed like maybe it was a photograph, but of what or where he straight-up couldn’t tell. The image was just too blurry, so all he could make out were smears of colors. Weird. Why someone would go to the effort of saving something like that, he couldn’t say, but if there’s one thing you learn in college it’s that people are strange and very rarely make sense, so he was happy enough to shrug it off and let it go.

But that’s when something else caught his eye. The window was set up so that he could see at least a _bit_ of the metadata, and what he saw was that, uh…well, something must’ve been off about the drive, because it was saying that the other document—his paper—had been updated, uh…two seconds ago.

And that couldn’t be right, could it? Two seconds ago he’d been looking at that…whatever that was in the image file. Again, weirdness abounds. So for shits and giggles he opened his paper, and…

And…

Holy. Shit.

He saw the page counter at the bottom first, and that’s what got him. He’d written a page and a half, but somehow, _impossibly_ , the document said it had _twelve_.

That…that _also_ couldn’t be right. No part of that could be right. So he started scrolling.

At first he recognized his own writing. Intro sentence, a few support sentences, blah blah blah…but then he found the spot where he’d given up, the spot that he’d been staring at for a solid fifteen minutes while contemplating ramming his head into the computer until he passed out or cracked his head clean in half. And yeah, it…it kept going.

It wasn’t gibberish either, it was actual words. And sentences. And fuck, _paragraphs_ that all made sense! There were footnotes and citations and…and it was…a whole paper. It was a whole-ass paper, totally done. Totally _complete_. Just… _there_.

He looked over his shoulder for a hot second as though expecting Ashton Kutcher to jump out and yell ‘SURPRISE!’ or some shit. There wasn’t anyone or anything there, though, unless the nighttime librarian counted, but mostly she was just sitting behind her desk paging through a magazine and drinking from her Styrofoam cup. She didn’t really seem like the prank sort, in his opinion either, not that that really mattered.

When he looked back, it was still there. Nothing had changed. It wasn’t a trick of the light, or…ah, as he thought of that he reached up and pinched his face as hard as he could and yeah, okay, that hurt like a _bitch_ , so he probably wasn’t dreaming.

He was too tired and too confused to really question any of it. Sometimes you don’t look those gift horses in the mouth, you just pat them on the nose, give them a sugar cube, and thank them for their service. So he did what anyone in that situation would do…he printed it. Across the room he heard the lab’s printer rev up and start spitting out pages, and in his head he counted each papery sound it made as another page came out.

One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…

***

“ _We get it!_ ” Mike groaned. “You can _count!_ We’re all _very_ proud of y—” Before he could finish, Emily shouted from next to him, the suddenness of it causing him to fumble and drop his beer. “Holy _fuckshit_ , what?! What?!”

By the light of her phone and the fire, Emily’s grimace threw strange shadows across her face, giving her a vaguely wraithlike appearance. “Oh _God_ …I looked up Smile Dog.”

“Now, I told you not to _do that_ ,” Chris started.

Jess was leaning over to her right a moment later, sticking her face in Emily’s space to get a glimpse of her phone. “ _Eugh!_ Um, ew? What even _is_ that?!”

“None of you would survive three minutes in an actual horror movie. Not a single one. You morons are the people who read the _Necronomicon_ out loud. Cochise, for the love of all that’s holy, please just keep going before these idiots summon Slenderman or some shit.”

***

Still, when he got up out of his chair, part of him expected to find that he had, in fact, gone nuts. He’d grab the pile of sheets in the printer’s tray and flip through them, seeing type on the first two pages and then ten blank ones after that, and…

Nope. It was all there. Plain as day. Size twelve, Times New Roman, double-spaced. He held it in his hands, the paper a little warm from the printer, and that was that. He tapped the stack on the table to make it even, then headed back to the computer to sign himself out. He put the papers into his bag, put his phone into his pocket, and then found himself staring down at that fucking thumb drive.

His hands itched to grab it. That was mostly an exaggeration—the thing skeeved him just a little bit. Sure it had done him this solid, but…

Okay, yeah, no, he was thinking about a goddamn memory stick like it was a sentient being. That was absolutely the sleep deprivation talking.

The thing didn’t belong to him. Someone would probably be looking for it. They’d be a little confused when they saw some stranger had accidentally saved an English essay on it, but hey, again, college. Sometimes that kind of shit just happened. No big shake.

He got up from the desk and left. But that fucking thing stuck in his brain all night like a hunk of Swedish Fish sticks in your teeth. Just…couldn’t stop thinking about it. So he made a promise with himself as he got back to his dorm: Tomorrow, after handing in his paper, of course, he’d go back to the library’s computer lab…and if no one had come to reclaim the drive…then… _he_ would.

***

Chris drew in a breath but didn’t get to use it.

From somewhere deeper in the woods, way beyond the copse of trees standing behind him and Josh and Sam, something _screamed_.

The ten of them in the circle froze as though they’d been struck, everyone leaning forward or turning around towards the source of the sound. It was useless, of course—everything outside of the fire was dim and shapeless, and where the tree line started there was only darkness.

A heavy gust of wind tore through the Pines then, making the treetops dance in the moonlight, whipping the fire up into a frenzy and causing more than a few of them to cling to their hats to keep them from flying off.

The sound did not come again.

“That was…probably an elk…” Hannah said, speaking slowly as she craned her head even farther back, looking over her shoulder at an angle that seemed almost painful.

“Or a, uh, mountain lion.” Sam felt her teeth threaten to chatter, though she doubted whether it was due to the cold. “Or a fox. They all, um…they can all sound like that during rut.”

“During _what?_ ”

“Mating season,” Ashley said, proving once and for all that it took a little more than abject terror to turn off her innate desire to always prove she knew everything.

There was another moment of silence save for the whistling of the wind, long and uncomfortable, where the ten of them stared out towards the forest with all of their muscles clenched.

Then, shattering that moment into a million tiny pieces, Mike spoke up. “If that’s what mountain lions sound like when they bone down, then thank fucking _Christ_ I’m a human being.”

The tension broke like a flatscreen tv being hit by a Wiimote. Emily snorted a surprised laugh and elbowed Mike’s arm, and before long they were _all_ laughing again, seized by the same movie theater laughter that had bounced between them earlier in the night. The ‘I’m not scared, you are!’ laughter. The post-jump-scare laughter.

“Welp, you heard the spirit of the woods, Cochise,” Josh joked, “And it doesn’t sound all too jazzed about what you’re giving us so far…”

“Shut up, dude,” he said as he reached over and gave him a good ol’ shove. “It’s not my fault the spirit of the woods has shit taste.”

Beth sucked a breath through her teeth. “Yeah,” she drawled, “That’s what it is.”

***

The next day he handed in his paper and somehow sat through class. It was a close call, don’t get me wrong, because all he could think about was getting back to the library and seeing if that flash drive was still there. The _second_ his class let out, he absolutely booked it and made a beeline for the library.

With every step he took, he tried to talk himself out of it a little bit. Chances were good there’d be someone sitting at that computer, after all. Even if there wasn’t anyone sitting there, someone’d probably swooped in and swiped the drive. _And_ , on top of all that, there was still a very real possibility that he’d just had some sort of out-of-body experience last night, and that he _had_ managed to write that whole paper in some sort of Red Bull induced stupor before blacking out. That last hypothetical felt…upsettingly realistic.

But when he got there, the seat was empty.

And the flash drive? It was still there. Still right. Fucking. There.

Cool as the other side of the pillow, he slid into the seat in front of the computer and set his bag down, trying to be casual while remaining _somewhat_ scientific about the whole thing. The joy about campus computer labs is that everyone else is always so panicked about their own bullshit that they hardly ever pay attention to what’s going on outside their bubble, so after a few seconds of clicking around and signing into and out of his email, he felt safe enough to do what he’d come to do.

…but just because he couldn’t get it out of his head, he opened the drive up again.

His paper was gone. The .jpg was there, but his paper was _gone_. Had…had someone come by and deleted it? What fucking sense did _that_ make? They’d leave one file but not the other? And they wouldn’t just…pluck the drive for themselves? The fuck kind of thought process was that?

He couldn’t figure it out. Then again, he wasn’t entirely sure there _was_ anything to figure out, or that there _was_ a mystery there, though it sure fucking felt like it. As he sat there piecing it all together—or, like, _pretending_ he was piecing it all together—that curiosity got the better of him for a second time. He opened up the .jpg, wondering if maybe there was something he’d missed the night before, some kind of clue, maybe, or identifier, or _something_ …and wouldn’t you know it, that turned out to be a very interesting idea he had.

Clearly he must’ve been more tired last night than he’d even imagined, because looking at the image file that time, it wasn’t _half_ as blurry as he remembered it being. It was still blurry, to be sure, but it wasn’t just abstract swirls of color like he’d thought it’d been. Now he could _alllmost_ see something? Could almost make out some kind of shape, or, or something. It was a little like those magic eye posters or whatever, where if you cross your eyes, unfocus ‘em, squint, and then tilt your head to the side in just the right way, you can see the hidden image. He didn’t see a hidden image, exactly, but if he really strained, he thought he could see a…a hallway?

Weird. Weird, weird, weird. The whole thing was weird. His essay being gone, though, that was the strangest thing of all.

He x’ed out of the image and thought to himself for a second. There was an easy way to figure out whether he’d imagined the other part of what had happened last night—the essay writing itself part. So he signed back into his email and scrolled for a second until he found what he was looking for: the back-and-forth string of messages between him and his project partners in another class. There, at the very end of the chain, was the partially completed slideshow they were supposed to present in a couple weeks. He looked at it for a second, not entirely sure what he was feeling, and then dragged the slideshow’s file over onto the drive.

He waited.

And waited.

And mostly, he…felt stupid. This was a stupid thing he was doing, sitting around, running the scientific method on…what, a magic thumb drive? Come on.

That didn’t stop him from opening the drive again. Aaand it didn’t stop him from opening the slideshow.

What he saw there was enough to make him grab the fucking thing out of the USB port and put it right in his pocket, next to his phone.

No part of him understood what this thing was or how this shit was happening—but he wasn’t about to ask any questions, know what I mean? Picture it: Every assignment you have to do, every paper, every presentation, every nightmarish worksheet or analysis or take-home exam you’re expected to waste your time on, just…done _for_ you.

But he wasn’t a _complete_ idiot. He waited until he got his grade back for the first paper before he made any rash decisions with this glorious, magical piece of tech. When the prof mentioned in class that those grades had been posted, he grit his teeth together and very, very nervously signed into his student portal account…clicked on the class’s link…opened his grades, and…almost began to _weep_ in the classroom. It was a fucking A. A fucking A for a paper he’d written like…ten percent of. At _most_.

From that point on, it was on like Donkey Kong. He just _blazed_ through all the work that he’d been letting back up over the past few weeks. Only one at a time, though! Only one at a time…he hadn’t exactly experimented with whether or not he could put multiple things onto the drive at a time, and honestly? He wasn’t fixing to try. Why mess with success, right? So he stuck to that—one assignment or project at a time, never more than one a day, and every single time the finished product was…oh, it was beautiful. Amazing.

Strangely, though, he began to notice something.

Every single time he saved a file onto the drive, the .jpg file updated.

About a week into it, that curiosity reared its ugly head again, and knowing that the image file was a corrupted mess, he clicked on it anyway, mostly to quiet down that kinda…nervous feeling he got whenever he saw that the .jpg had updated. Only here’s the thing, it _didn’t_ quiet down that feeling. If anything, it cranked it up to eleven.

The file opened and he realized he didn’t need to squint or tilt his head to the side or any of that shit anymore. Oh no, the picture in the file was very, _very_ easy to make out that time around. It was almost as though every time he loaded something onto the drive, the image made itself clearer, or focused in, or got better in some other way. When he looked at it then, sitting at the shoddy little desk in his dorm room, it couldn’t have been more different from the strange swirls of colors and pixels he’d seen that first night.

Like he’d thought before, it _was_ a hallway! A _dorm_ hallway, unless he was wrong, and he didn’t think he was.

The familiarity of it made his skin crawl for a second, but that was stupid. Yeah this whole mysterious photograph thing was creepy, but every dorm hallway looked like every other dorm hallway. Who was to say this was a photo of a dorm on his campus? It could’ve been any campus of any school in any part of the country. Still, it wasn’t sitting well. He made the executive decision then, looking at that picture, that he was going to try to get rid of the file.

Again.

Now, I said he didn’t experiment with saving more than one thing at a time, but I should mention here that he _had_ tried to get rid of that .jpg a couple times since claiming the glorious flash drive as his own. But whenever he tried to delete it…shit sort of locked up. He’d get a loading circle or a window would pop up with a frustratingly vague message that only said ‘ERROR,’ and that was that. This time? This time he wasn’t gonna quit until he got rid of that thing, if only for his peace of mind.

So imagine his surprise when he left clicked on that sucker, hit delete, and it…disappeared. Huh. Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but the only word to occur to him was ‘weird.’ The whole thing was just _weird!_ It had given him so much trouble before, so now for it to be so easy? Weird. But then again, tech has a habit of bringing us forward two steps and taking us back one, and who among us feels comfortable in assuming they understand the whims of our silicon gods? Not I, and certainly not _him_.

With the .jpg gone, he dragged and dropped his newest assignment onto the drive (a godawful analysis he had to do for one of his core classes) and shut his laptop to go take a shower. He grabbed his shower stuff, a change of clothes, and a towel, then left his dorm and made his way down the hall to the shared bathroom.

When he got back, all scrubbed fresh and squeaky clean, he opened his laptop again, planning on checking his latest assignment before sending it to be printed, and…

The .jpg was back.

He stared at it for a hot second, sort of surprised but sort of… _not_ surprised, too. He felt a whole lot like a guy who’d stomped down onto a millipede, so sure that he’d killed it, only to come back into the room with a tissue and find its gross, noodly corpse missing.

Worse still, he could see that the thing had updated less than a minute ago. The .jpg, not the uh, metaphorical millipede.

His hand hovered over the trackpad of his laptop, itching to open that thing and see if anything had changed with its update…but he found himself clicking on his assignment instead. That was the whole reason he’d even opened his computer up again in the first place, and he’d been hoping to turn it in first thing tomorrow, so…

He felt his stomach drop when he opened the document.

It was blank. Not a single word had been added.

Had he…drained it? Whatever ‘it’ was? Had he used up all of the magic, or goodwill, or supernatural ability of the flash drive? Or…and this was a thought so uncomfortable, so disconcerting, that he didn’t let himself think it for too long…was it possible that by deleting that stupid blurry .jpg he’d _pissed it off?_

Pfft, no. That was dumb. That was dumb! It was about as dumb as dumb got, except—oh no.

When he opened the .jpg that time, there was no mistaking it. Maybe every dorm hall in the country looked the same, but there were no ifs, ands, or buts here…the hallway in the image was _his_ hallway. And he should know—he’d _just_ been out there, heading to the shower and back. He could see the details of the hall in perfect clarity. There was the abandoned sock crammed against one of the walls, there was an old Milky Way wrapper poking out from under one of his neighbor’s doors, and there…

There…

Slowly he slumped into his chair, his legs turning into Jell-O when he saw what he saw.

There, at the very end of the hall, was a figure. He couldn’t see much of it because it was standing under the _one_ burnt-out wall light and was thusly cloaked by the darkness of the shadows there, but he could tell it was a person. Or close to a person. They were tall, he could see, and wearing some kind of-of-of… _hood,_ maybe. Something keeping its face from being seen.

He’d _just_ been out there in the hallway.

He’d _just_ passed that spot.

He hadn’t seen anything—or any _one_ —standing there.

But the metadata on the drive said that this had been uploaded only a minute ago.

Glad he didn’t have a roommate who might catch him jumping like some kinda kid, he glanced over his shoulder towards his door. Was it…was it possible there was something out there? Waiting? He slowly moved his eyes down, down, down to the base of the door, where the light from the hall sort of bled through, and…was there a break in that light?

Was something standing outside his door?

His heart was in his fucking throat as he turned around in his chair, deleting the file again. For good measure, he deleted his assignment, too, figuring he’d either try again tomorrow after he had a full night of sleep and a brain that felt a little more up to the task of troubleshooting, or he’d give up the ghost entirely and write the damn thing himself. Whichever way you sliced it, seeing the flash drive empty gave him a moment of relief.

And then the .jpg popped up again. Along with his desire to barf.

It would’ve been so easy not to open it… _so fucking easy!_ But the memory of that figure in the hallway was scorched into his mind, probably a trick of the light or lack thereof but _possibly_ something else, something worse, something that had to do with this thing he’d stolen—because let’s face it, he had, in fact, _stolen_ the flash drive—and he opened it.

The image on the file was no longer that of his hallway.

It was his fucking _door_.

He could see the number. The nameplate. The spot of missing varnish on the doorframe.

Before he could stop himself, he called out that THIS ISN’T FUNNY, YOU ASSHOLE! But there wasn’t any answer.

He turned around again, and that time he was sure—he was _positive_ —that he could see two dark spots breaking up the light from the hall. Two feet. Just outside his door. Someone was standing out there, waiting, not making a noise, not moving an inch, biding their time for, for…well who _knew_ what they were waiting for?

Carefully, feeling like all of his muscles had been torn out of his body and replaced with overcooked strands of spaghetti, he got up from his chair and crept over to the door, careful to avoid the spots on the floor that he knew might creak. Uncomfortably aware of every horror movie he’d ever watched— _especially_ the ones where some moron got stabbed through the eye while looking out a peephole—he peered out the door’s peephole and saw…

No one.

He pressed himself closer and looked more carefully.

Nothing there.

His hand found the doorknob and began to twist it.

Centimeter. By. Miserable. Centimeter.

When he felt it click under his palm, he _yanked_ it open with every ounce of strength he had, and—

The hallway was empty. There was no one standing in front of his door, no one standing in the shadows underneath the burnt out wall light, no one anywhere doing anything. Even the voices of his neighbors seemed somehow quieter than usual. He was alone. He was completely and totally alone.

He stood in the doorway for another second to reassure himself of that fact, then he pulled the door shut and made sure to lock it.

Marching over to his computer, he deleted the .jpg again.

And before he could slam his computer shut, a new .jpg popped up in its place.

No way, he said to himself, no way am I opening _that_ fucking thing. So he didn’t! But he didn’t need to.

It opened itself.

There, on his screen, wasn’t a picture of his hallway. It wasn’t a picture of his door.

It was a picture of his room.

The inside of his room.

And there, in center frame, outlined by the light of his laptop…was his back.

He was in the picture—he was _in_ the fucking picture!

As he stood there, trying to figure out what in the fuck he was seeing, he heard a tiny, metallic click from behind him.

Like someone was turning the doorknob.

Trying to swallow but choking on his own spit, he turned around, and there, right behind him, was— _RAAAAAAAGH!_

***

It was actually rather impressive, really, how seamlessly Chris went from telling his story to _screaming on top of his lungs_ , the suddenness of it bringing forth a veritable _chorus_ of screams from the rest of the circle, people jumping out of their skin and (at least in the case of poor Hannah) even falling off of the benches.

Grinning wide enough to split his head in half, Chris immediately collapsed into a gale of laughter, Josh joining him very soon after.

“Oh fuck _you_ , man!”

“Gotcha!”

“Sure fucking did…” The two of them knocked their knuckles together in a truly heartwarming show of bro-flavored solidarity. “Holy shit, almost needed a change of undies, there…”

“Oh my God…when that fucking thing in the woods shrieked like that I was _so sure_ it was gonna ruin my _whole deal_ , but _Jesus_ …you should see the looks on your _faces!_ ”

Around them, the others had begun to pull themselves together, Ashley taking it upon herself to _ram_ Chris’s side as hard as she could with her shoulder, very nearly toppling him. “That was _so_ mean! So mean! Oh my God… _oh_ my God…”

“You’re a dick,” Beth agreed as she helped Hannah back up onto the bench, brushing some of the snow from her jacket.

“That wasn’t even a _story_ , that was just—”

“Ah, ah, ah…” Josh lifted a finger to silence the chatter of so many furious voices, “Maybe you hacks are unaware, but there is a rich history of stories like the one our dear pal Cochise here just told us…just because none of _you_ thought to pull a _Me Tie Dough-ty Walker_ doesn’t mean you reserve the right to—”

“ _Me Tie_ what?”

Running her fingers through her hair to smooth it back down, Jess shook herself out and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, rich history or not, that was dumb as hell. Is it voting time? Are we voting now? I vote no.”

“I vote Chris leaves,” Emily agreed. “Like, the mountain. Indefinitely.”

“I’ll second that motion.”

“Thirded.”

“Fourthed!”

When he turned to her, eyes jokingly pleading, Ashley shook her head. “No. _No!_ That sucked _so hard,_ Chris! I’m not helping you here—no way, no how!”

“Ash…”

“I do _not_ accept your submission to the Midnight Society.”

“ _Aaash…_ ”

“Denied! Rejected!”

Josh pulled a face and pretended to address Chris in an aside. “Don’t you listen to them, bro, they don’t appreciate the _art_.” He slung an arm around Chris’s shoulders and gestured widely with his other hand, “We’re _leagues_ above these bottomfeeders, you can’t expect them to recognize genius when it bites them on the—”

Matt snorted a quiet laugh. “That’s your idea of genius, huh?”

“Explains a lot, doesn’t it?” Sam groaned.

“Well, _I_ vote a resounding _yea_ on this one, so don’t you worry, my good man, welcome to the club.”

“Um…and why, pray tell, does _your_ vote supersede all of ours?” Tilting her head to the side, Emily fixed Josh with a look perfectly reminiscent of a hawk sizing up a tasty little chipmunk.

Josh didn’t miss a beat: “I’m the eldest, for one. Also, this is my mountain. And, not for nothing, I’m sort of the expert when it comes to stuff like this, so…yeah. As the foremost authority on all things horror here, I think we can all agree—”

“Well we don’t. We don’t all agree.” Beth met Chris’s gaze after glancing around the circle, her expression making it abundantly clear that just because he wasn’t blood-related didn’t mean he got to escape the wrath of the little sister treatment. “If we’re all making up our own rules, then here—as one of the _three_ people present that this mountain belongs to, I’d like to put Emily’s idea to a formal vote. All in favor of exiling Hartley to the base of the mountain where he belongs, say aye?”

The response was _deafening_.


	9. Mike’s Story: The Tale of the Creature…in the Nighttime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant tags for this chapter: Pure, pants-wetting terror, unbridled CREEPINESS

When the last of their laughter trailed off, the wind carried their echoes back to them. That sound, much like Shakira’s hips, did not lie—the jump-scare had been stupid as fuck, there was no denying that, but it was clear that it had really gotten to them. _All_ of them. That was a point of great joy for say, Josh and Chris (both of whom were _clearly_ having the time of their lives), and a point of considerable embarrassment for everyone else.

These were baby stories! For babies! Were they really letting themselves be scared by the likes of their idiotic friends? And yeah, okay, being up there on the mountaintop was probably a _big_ ol’ chunk of that anxiety, what with the wildlife and its great love of screaming at inopportune times, but even then, it was just trees! It was just snow! It was just…well okay, there might’ve been bears nearby, they hadn’t really reached a consensus on that one, but still! It wasn’t even as dark as it would’ve gotten back home in any of their backyards, thanks to the stars and northern lights!

Grabbing those thoughts by the horns, Mike shook himself out and leaned closer to the fire. “All right, all right, all right…” he said with a joking Matthew McConaughey drawl, “I think we can _all_ agree that that was a crock of shit—no offense, man.”

Across the way, Chris only shrugged. “You kidding me? Compared to the feedback I usually get, crock of shit is high praise.”

“Yeah, I…I do not doubt that. _Anyway!_ I think it’s time to show you sweet, precious, beautiful children what a _real_ scary story is.”

At that, a brief, borderline exhausted look was shared between Matt, Jess, and Emily. The three of them had the, uh…hmm…great honor of knowing precisely what _that_ tone of voice meant when it was Mike doing the talking, and hoo boy, the premature Schadenfreude was strong enough to (momentarily) quell even the on-again-off-again arguing that seemed to serve as a fundamental building block of Emily and Jess’s friendship. It was the tone of voice he used when getting ready to bullshit to the best of his ability and—not to put too fine a point on things—that so very rarely worked out well for him.

So obviously their hopes were incredibly high. Just…maybe not for the right reasons.

Mike took one more swig from his beer before cavalierly throwing the empty bottle over his shoulder and into the snow. 

“You’re gonna have to pick that up before we leave, y’know,” someone (probably Ashley) said, but he ignored them completely.

“Ah-he-he-he-hem…if you would, my good man.” Mike gave a little bow in Josh’s direction, accompanying the gesture with many, many flourishes of his hands. “Tighten your belts, my friends, because you may just find your pants scared right the fuck off of you once you hear this—my submission to the, well…” For show, he checked his phone, “Still-Not-Quite-Midnight Society.”

“Eeeveryone’s a fucking critic…” Josh muttered as he threw the ceremonial handful of pine needles into the fire. “Laugh it up.” He hadn’t spoken nearly loud enough for Mike to hear all the way on the other side of the circle, but even if he had, he would’ve been ignored.

“This is the Tale of the Creature…” Mike let it hang in the air for a second, and when no one immediately reacted in pants-wetting terror, added, “…in the Nighttime.”

“God help us all,” Beth said under her breath, dropping her head into her hands even as Hannah nudged her and Mike began to speak, “I think I have a pre-headache.”

_***_

Something weird had been happening outside his house for the past couple weeks. _Seriously_ weird, too, not your run-of-the-mill tp’ing or ding-dong-ditching.

At first it was easy to ignore…he’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear noises, but _lots_ of things make noise. Dishwashers. Cars driving by. Late-night joggers. Neighbors banging with the windows open. Birds. If he lived his life freaking out over every sudden noise that happened, he’d never have a second of peace. And okay, sometimes he’d wake up to go let the dog out and see the trashcans knocked over, but fuck, again, dog! And wind! Shit happens sometimes, sans explanation and sans willful recognition. The world is full of moving cogs and sometimes those fuckers slip, so he figured it could’ve been any number of the things I already mentioned…take your pick.

Point being, he’d noticed the weird shit that had been going on. He really had, he just didn’t think it was all that important. Or, quite frankly, _out of the ordinary_. That old saying, right—shit happens.

But there’s always that moment where too much shit happens and you have to take notice.

For him, that moment came at the _worst_ possible time. Mostly because he was on the couch with his girlfriend, _very_ quickly rounding second base and heading for third—

***

“Oh my God.” Lesser men would’ve been turned to dust by the tone of Emily’s voice.

Mike, however, seemed perfectly fine. “These are key details, Em, necessary for characterization purposes. Like Chris’s note about the consumption!”

She opted not to say anything that time, but the finger quotes she made in the air as he said ‘characterization purposes’ were sharp enough to cut through steel.

“There are _children_ here! Good God, man!” A few seats down, a would-be scuffle was taking place, Chris covering Ashley’s ears with his hands, Ashley trying to get away but laughing just the same. “Have some shame!”

“You guys are— _hey!_ ” Hannah didn’t get to finish that thought as Beth similarly reached over to clamp her hands over _her_ ears. “I’m not a _child!_ Oh my God, I’m older than _you!_ ”

“Eh, you’re younger at heart than me, though.”

“What?”

“I said you’re…” Ah, right. She couldn’t hear her. Beth snorted a particularly unflattering laugh at the realization, and the rest of the group was helpless to keep from joining in.

He took the excuse to crack open a new beer and take a drink. “Didn’t realize I was stuck playing to the PG-13 crowd, my bad. Uh…so where was I…?”

“Rounding second, sliding into third.”

Mike raised his beer to Matt, who cheersed him in return. “You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. …well, a gentleman. Okay, so he’s on the couch with his honey, and—”

***

—and there was this unholy racket from outside. _BOOM! BANG!_ Absolute craziness—and not the kind of craziness you _want_ to be happening when you’re getting handsy. Bad crazy. Break-in crazy, to be more specific.

So he did what _any_ red-blooded American would do…he grabbed the metal baseball bat he kept by the door for just such an occasion, flipped on the porch light, and stormed outside like Vin Diesel.

But there wasn’t anyone outside. Not a single living soul. Not even a neighbor awkwardly watering their shrubs after work or anything, just…an empty street. An empty yard.

He signaled to his girlfriend to stay inside just in case they needed to call the cops or something, and then quietly…he began to scope out the house. He crept along the side and saw nothing…but when he got to the backyard, he saw something a little…off.

Right there, not totally pressed up against the house but awfully close, was a beer bottle. Just laying there in a patch of grass. A patch of grass that looked like maybe it had been stamped down. _Maybe_. It was hard to tell because of how dark it was, but what _wasn’t_ hard to tell was _what_ that bottle was laying in front of.

A window.

 _The_ window, in fact—the window that, oh! How coincidental!—gave him a perfect view of the living room…not to mention the couch where his girlfriend was now sitting alone. What a crazy random happenstance, huh?

He didn’t like that. Nah, not even a little. Didn’t like it one goddamn bit. Could he say with any certainty that someone was watching them? Well no, there wasn’t anyone there that he could see. But by that same token, could he say that there _hadn’t_ been some neck-bearded perv enjoying a frosty Bud Light Lime while getting his jollies off to them? _Also_ no.

But there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Not then, anyway, not without anything even _resembling_ proof. What, was he gonna call the cops and say “Hey there, I found an empty bottle in my yard?” Maybe report Casper the friendly ghost for litter-based offenses? I think not. Not with the American legal system being what it is currently, anyway.

So he went back inside. Closed the blinds. _Tight_. Went to bed. But he kept it right at the front of his mind. Ran through the shit he’d been ignoring for the past few weeks. He swore to himself that if it happened again, it would be the last time.

So help him _God_.

He went for a jog the next morning like he always did. Thing was, he couldn’t stop thinking about that bottle laying in the grass. Bottles don’t just fly into yards, after all, so clearly there must’ve been other forces at play. So after he made his way around the neighborhood, he made a beeline into the backyard again to see if there was anything he’d missed last night.

Voilà. Since there was light, he _did_ see something. For one, some jackass had knocked his trashcan over. Great. So he bent down to straighten that up, and as he stood again, the sun caught in juuust the right way and revealed a single greasy handprint on the window.

But there was…there was something _wrong_ about the shape of it. It was too small to be _his_ hand—he could see that without even lifting his to compare it—and way too narrow to be his girlfriend’s. The fingers, though…the fingers were where it got really, _really_ weird. They were long. Too long for the palm. And worse, the tips…the fingertips looked almost… _pointy_.

He liked the whole thing even less than he had the night before, if that was possible. Last night he’d figured this was just some neighborhood creep. Now? Now he wasn’t so sure. That hand was fucked up. It was fucked right the hell up and it just wasn’t right.

Before he did anything else, he grabbed the bottom of his shirt and used it to wipe away the print. Okay, he used it to wipe away the print _as best as he could_ , because as it turned out, it wasn’t just greasy, it was sticky too. Really sticky. Like, really, _really_ sticky. Sticky in a decidedly upsetting way, considering the circumstances.

He made a mental note to burn the shirt instead of throwing it in the laundry. Can’t be too careful these days.

The rest of the day passed like normal, and while he never got the whole thing out of his head, he thought he’d mostly gotten over it by the time he hunkered down to go to bed. Mostly.

 _Taptaptaptap_ …

He hadn’t been totally asleep, but he’d sure been close enough that hearing a noise like that made him bolt wide awake again, heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his fucking _teeth_.

 _Taptaptippitytaptaptap_ …

His eyes were all fuzzy from sleeping, so it took him a second to find the lights and flip them on. But he got there! And when he did, he lost another second to the flash from the lights completely blinding him.

 _Taptiptap_ …

That was close.

That was real close.

He spun around and just barely saw something at the window—a dark shape that slunk down and disappeared before he could get a good look at it.

Fuck. Fuck! What the fuck had that been?! His bedroom was on the second floor, what in God’s name could’ve been tapping at his window?!

Heart still going a million miles a minute, he acted on pure adrenaline and yanked the window open before shoving his head out into the air. Lucky for him, he was _just_ in time to watch something dark dart around the house and into the night.

“Hey!” he called out the window, “Hey _asshole!_ ”

He slammed the window shut again and bolted down the stairs as fast as he could, almost tripping over his tangled feet in the process. He grabbed the bat by the door, flung it open, and charged outside as he had the night before, ready to show that…that… _whatever it was_ that he meant business.

But again, just like the night before…there was nothing out there. Nothing in the backyard, front yard, or at the sides of the house. Nothing.

When he got his pulse under control he went back up to his bedroom, got into bed…and then, already pretty sure he knew what he was going to see, he got out of bed again so he could flip the lights back on. Then he looked at his window.

And there it was.

Well, there _they_ were.

Handprints.

Narrow handprints.

Narrow handprints with long, pointed fingers.

And there were…tons of them. More than ten, probably closer to twenty. They absolutely _covered_ his window, hardly leaving an inch without some greasy gunk smeared across the glass.

This was getting to be too much. Wayyy too much.

The next morning, totally fed up with that shit, he stopped at the mall before work and got a little insurance policy. An expensive one, too—a top-of-the-line security cam, the kind rigged with night vision and motion detection. The good shit. He set it up just over the porch light in the backyard, figuring it would be hidden enough that whatever was peeking into his windows at night wouldn’t notice it. Then he hooked the whole shebang up to his computer, and went to work.

Literal work. Like, his _career_ , work.

Now, he sort of expected to watch the footage throughout the day and see someone—or _something_ —scoping his place out while he was away. Nuh-uh. No go. There was _nothing!_ The motion detector was tripped a few times, but when he checked, it was only a delivery van driving by, the mailman coming around…and once a jogger let her dog shit on his front lawn, but that was neither here nor there.

By the time he got home, the sun had just started to set, and even though he knew that nothing out of the ordinary had gone down while he was out, he couldn’t help but pop into the backyard to check the camera again. Just in case.

But the camera seemed fine and all of the blinds were still closed, meaning there was absolutely _no chance_ anyone would be able to see inside. Not even a peek. His girlfriend hadn’t really been convinced, but by his standards, everything seemed shut tight.

Whatever this thing was, he was fucking ready this time. And he was going to catch the motherfucker on film.

He ate dinner, watched some tv, just really lived every suburbanite’s wet-dream, y’know. Hours passed and a grand total of fuck-all happened, and that was _fine_ by him—maybe he’d scared the creep away! Mission accomplished. Either way, he wasn’t going to sit there just staring at his computer the whole night, so he got into the shower to wash the day away.

Almost the second he got naked, he heard it.

The motion detector alarm on his computer.

He turned the shower off, bunny-hopped back into his boxers, and ran into his bedroom. In the process he came _real_ close to beefing it on the slippery bathroom tiles, and as he got into his room, he heard something _else_.

The same banging he heard that first night. Metallic and loud as hell— _BANG! BANG!_ and then _BOOM!_ , that last one sounding like thunder. Or someone knocking over his trash again.

The fucker was back.

Frantic now, he went to his computer and pulled up the feed, and holy shit, the eyes! The _eyes!_ For a second that was all he could see…eyes _glowing_ in the dark. First four, then six, then _ten!_ Bright and reflective and pale, gleaming and seeming to all blink at the same time. He couldn’t fucking breathe.

The camera shifted and that was when he saw the hands…the same ones that had left those greasy prints on his windows, long and scraggly, with awful, spindly, grabby fingers and dirty nails so overgrown they hooked over and looked more like claws.

And then the camera shifted again.

And then he could see… _everything_.

There, in the greenish light of the night vision camera, he saw exactly what had been peering into his windows at night, and God help him, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

 _Raccoons_. And a _lot_ of them, at that.

***

The silence that followed was not kind.

Mike sat there grinning like a fool, his fingers flared out as if to say ‘Eh? Ehhh? Whaddya think?’

Across the fire, Sam opened her mouth. Then she closed it. She opened it again. Then, making a strained sound that couldn’t quite decide whether it was a cough or a laugh, she looked his way. “Uh…raccoons?”

“Yeah, like five or six of ‘em, too!”

She nodded and pressed her lips tightly together. Whether or not she wanted to get any further clarification was uncertain; she just kept nodding her head, even as she reached for her thermos and unscrewed its cap.

“Raccoons,” Jess repeated incredulously, “Were they like… _demonic_ raccoons, or…?”

“Oh, right, because raccoons needs to be demonic to be scary. Have you ever seen a raccoon’s teeth, Jess? Those fuckers carry rabies like there’s no tomorrow!”

Emily turned away from the fire to level her gaze at him. “What about the handprints you made such a big deal out of? If it was just raccoons, then like, how were they—”

“Uh, raccoons have hands, Em. Tiny little baby hands.” As though it somehow proved his point, Mike held his hands out towards her and flexed his fingers a few times. “Creepy as _shit_.”

“You never _said_ they were little baby-sized hands, though,” Ashley added, her face drawn in like she’d just taken a big bite of an apple only to realize a second too late that it had actually been an onion all along. She seemed physically pained by the ending’s twist. If it could even be called that.

“I _did_ say they were smaller than his hand, though. I did say that.”

“Yeah, you uh…you sure did…” Josh said, and oh, even the crackling of the fire and the whistling of the wind couldn’t hide the disdain in his voice. “…welp, okay kids, on that note…who’s going next?”

Mike let out an indignant huff. “You’re not even gonna do the stupid voting thing? C’mon! Everyone _else_ had their story voted on so far!”

Again, the circle fell silent.

And then Josh sniffed, the sound managing to communicate volumes without a single word. “…yeah, so who’s up next?”

“Hey, if you guys wanted _quality_ , then maybe _all of us_ could’ve gotten a little more warning about this shit!” Mike threw one of his arms out towards where Chris and Ashley were sitting before waving towards Sam as well, “ _Some of us_ got advance notice to start knitting together colorful _Hobbit-_ esque sagas, and _some of us_ were lured out here with the promise of booze and snack foods before having this stupid shit _foisted_ on us, so…”

After a beat, Hannah leaned over and offered Mike a tentative smile. “ _I_ liked your story,” she reassured him. “They do have, um…weird hands.”

“ _Thank you!_ ”

“Raccoons…” Emily muttered to herself as she turned back towards the fire, trading her thermos for something significantly more alcoholic. “Jesus Christ…”

“Oh, I’m sorry—Chris gets to fucking shriek like a banshee and we’ll eventually accept _that_ as a glowing gem of true storytelling, but _I_ give you guys a horror story…a horror story _based on true events, by the way_ ,” Mike said, pointing furiously in the direction of the lodge and, by extension, the porch where he and the others had seen something lurking in the tree line, “And somehow _I’m_ the idiot, huh? Okay. All right. I see how it is. You know what? _You guys_ face down five or six raccoons in the middle of the night, with their grabby hands and their glowing eyes and their little…robber masks, and you tell me that you’re not scared. Tell me you’re not fuckin’ _terrified_.”

“The only thing terrifying me right now is how you thought that was gonna be a solid ending,” Matt snickered.

Having been quiet for a suspiciously long time, Jess took that moment to finally voice _her_ opinion on the story: “I think of all the like, woodland animals that could watch me make out with someone on a couch, I’d be the _most_ upset for it to be a raccoon. Does that make sense? I feel like they _know things_.”

“And I feel like _you_ need to stop drinking,” Emily said before reaching over and plucking Jess’s beer out of her hands, handing it to Mike instead. “Let’s not _add_ to the general stupidity of this whole situation, shall we? Thanks.” Then, raising her own drink to her mouth and shaking her head, she muttered one last derisive, “ _Raccoons_ …”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hot dang friends - we're officially past the halfway mark on this one!!! But don't you worry, there's still plenty of spookiness to cram into this puppy before we're done ;P
> 
> I wonder what'll happen next...


	10. Ashley’s Story: The Tale of the Somnambulist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant tags for this chapter: Paranoia, helplessness, blood

There was no question that a heavy, _heavy_ blanket of judgment was still hanging over the fire thanks to the combined one-two punch of Chris and Mike’s contributions. Neither seemed terribly offended by the others’ reactions, Chris and Josh snickering about something between themselves while Mike just sort of shrugged and nursed what was left of Jess’s beer, muttering to himself about how “Well _I_ thought it was good for something I was making up as I went along…” and “…better than how they ended _Game of Thrones_ …”, but all the same, that general feeling of, uh—failure? Yeah, failure, sure—that general feeling of failure permeated the icy air whipping at the flames.

Truly there was no debating that they had reached their first clunkers of the night.

The moment _that_ clicked in her mind, Ashley forced herself to do what she’d been dreading since Josh had revealed his plan to her and Chris a week ago. She spoke up. “I’ll go next!” Her voice came out so quickly and so _loudly_ that every single one of them turned to stare at her, and, not for the first time that night (and despite her childish fear of the dark), she found herself _glad_ for the shadows surrounding them. The glow of the fire gave everyone’s face a yellow-orange cast, meaning no one could see how beet-red hers was going. “I mean…I’m ready to go if no one else wants to.”

“Yeah, trust me…no one else wants to.” Had she been chewing gum, that would’ve been the moment Jess blew a bubble and popped it with her teeth. As it was, she had to settle for taking a pointed bite out of her s’more instead.

Emily sipped at her own drink next to her, rolling her eyes as she said, juuust loud enough to be heard, “Good luck getting the taste of Mike’s monstrosity out of my mouth…”

Beth leaned over to Sam and whispered from the very corner of her mouth, “Think it’s the first time she’s said _that?_ ” Thanks to the padding of her jacket, she heard more than felt Sam elbow her in the side. After a veiled look, the two of them hunched towards each other to shield some of their laughter, waving to Hannah and shaking their heads, telling her with their eyes that they’d explain later, later, _later_ , but not while she was sitting so close to Mike.

“All right…I’m kinda more of a _written_ -word person than I am a _spoken_ -word person, but I’m gonna try my best not to drag in any places or anything, so…okay.” Ashley cleared her throat once and wiggled her shoulders a bit as she found a more comfortable position to sit in. Under normal circumstances, she wasn’t entirely sure she would’ve been able to get a whole story out of herself in front of so many people (in addition to not being a spoken-word person, she was _decidedly_ not a public-speaking-person), but she’d made sure to choose her spot in the circle very, very carefully: With Chris and Matt on either side of her and Hannah directly across from her, the most judgmental of the group were placed firmly in her periphery. She had her buoys—the people she could trust to nod or smile at her if she looked their way—so she thought she could do this. “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society…” she began, giving the phrase all the gravitas she knew Josh felt it deserved, “I call this one The Somnambulist.”

Josh’s fist extended…and then stopped, pine needles still clutched between his fingers. “That’s not the way we’re doing this. That’s not the format. You know that.”

It never failed to surprise her how Josh could take her from an anxious wreck to an exasperated babysitter in less than a second. “Oh shush it. I did the opener just like you wanted. This is my story, I can call it what I want to, and I want to call it The Somnambulist.”

He perched his elbow on his knee and tilted his head as he looked her way. The angle of his neck made the blink that followed appear positively owlish. “ _The Tale of_ the Somnambulist.”

“ _No_ ,” Ashley insisted, “ _Just_ The Somnambulist.”

Lowering her voice to a whisper, Jess leaned over and asked Matt, “What’s a somnambulist?” They were both shit out of luck it seemed, because the only thing he could do was shrug.

“As I was saying. This is The—”

“TaleoftheSomnambulist,” Josh said all at once, throwing the pine needles into the fire before Ashley could correct him again.

“You are _so_ freaking weird!”

***

I’ve always been a sleepwalker—that seems like as good a place as any to start. It’s not a _huge_ problem, my sleepwalking, but it can make things complicated, especially if I’m in a place I’m not familiar with. I’ve never fallen down the stairs or anything like that…really, the worst trouble I’d gotten into before moving is once I tried to open my bedroom window, but my mom heard me and got me back to bed way before I could figure out the latch.

So like I said, it’s not dangerous! It’s just not the kind of thing you want to do when you’re, say, staying at someone else’s house, or away at summer camp. And it’s not like I do I every night! Most nights I can sleep with no problem—it’s only when I get really, really stressed out that it happens. _Yes,_ I’ve seen a doctor about it. But her only advice was to ‘reduce the sources of anxiety’ in my life, so…short of winning the lottery, dropping out of school, and then disappearing to become a hermit in the woods, I don’t think there’s a whole lot I can do at this juncture.

The only reason I bring any of this up is because I need you to understand that I was _so sure_ everything that happened to me in that apartment was just some weird side effect of my sleepwalking. See, my mom decided to up and move us there with almost _no_ warning—I had to leave my friends, my school, my house, my bed, _everything_ that meant anything to me, only to drop me into that awful, musty apartment, and I couldn’t even _say_ anything about it. How could I?! It wasn’t like Mom wanted to move either! But Gram and Gramps had gotten so old…and Gram kept getting sick…so it only made sense for us to move closer to them in case they needed help that winter. I understood all of that, but there was no denying it stressed me right the heck out…so when everything started, yeah, I thought it was just my stupid sleepwalking.

And…I was wrong about that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The apartment we ended up in wouldn’t have been my first choice…or even my second…or third…but it was my _mom_ who was paying for it, so I didn’t get a whole lot of say in the matter. I don’t want to make it sound like we were living in a cardboard box or anything; I mean, it was a two bedroom, two bathroom deal so we had space, and while the neighborhood wasn’t _fantastic_ , it also wasn’t like, terrifying. We got one of those little stick things that you jam under your doorknobs to keep people from breaking in, but really that was sort of more a peace of mind thing than a necessity. And honestly, I still don’t know if that thing even works the way it’s supposed to, so…maybe it doesn’t matter.

Anyway, I can still remember the sound of the super’s keys jingling as he let us into our unit. He was an older guy, going bald in that way a lot of guys do where his hairline made him look like an old-timey monk. He opened the door for us and gestured for us to walk in, and while I knew it was meant to be welcoming, some part of me still had reservations, so I hung back while he gave Mom the tour.

I stood out there on the landing, zipping my coat higher against the wind. We were having the first cold snap of the year—isn’t it weird what details stick out to you in retrospect? The things we remember? It was chilly, and I smelled something sour on the wind. Not sour in a citrusy way, but sour like…like a bathroom that hasn’t been cleaned in a long time. Sour like something old jammed in the very back of your closet and out of your view, almost out of your awareness, but there all the same, getting older and older and starting to turn yellow at the edges. I didn’t like that smell, but when I mentioned it to Mom later, she hadn’t noticed it, so I wrote it off as just another facet of my homesickness, my apprehension about starting life over so far from everything I knew.

Sleeping there the first night was hard. There’s something so…unnerving about trying to fall asleep in a place you’re unfamiliar with. Probably a leftover from the days where we were scared a predator would come slinking out of the grass to carry us off in the night. It makes sense, though, doesn’t it? We’re at our most vulnerable when we’re asleep; we’re at our weakest when we’re asleep. For all intents and purposes, we’re just defenseless little _things_ wrapped in cotton sheets and wool socks, putting our faith in tiny things like sticks wedged under doors and flimsy metal locks to see us through until the morning.

Those were the thoughts that kept coming back to me as I lay awake that night, swinging back and forth between staring at my ceiling and squeezing my eyes shut as tightly as I could. My new bedroom was nothing like my old one: Now my window overlooked a highway and the passing headlights would make strange shadows creep along the popcorn ceiling, and two of my four walls were taken up by doors. Doors, doors, doors…on one wall, the one next to my bed, there was the door to the rest of the apartment and a large closet with accordion doors that had folded outwards when I’d hung my clothes up. On the other wall, the one _across_ from my bed, there were two more, one opening to another, smaller closet—probably meant for utilities or whatever—and the other _ostensibly_ opening to an alcove that housed the water heater.

Here’s the thing: I say ‘ostensibly’ because well, the door didn’t actually…open. Whether it was the nap of the carpeting, rust in the hinges, a broken screw, _something_ , the thing didn’t open at all. The super said he’d call someone to handle it, and he even knocked a few dollars from our rent and security deposit because of it. I didn’t really care, believe it or not—not just because I had no real desire to scope out the water heater in my free time, but also because…and this is where I out myself as an absolute crybaby coward…if the door couldn’t open, it was one less door for me to worry about.

The others, though? The doors to those closets? I was pretty worried about them. Another leftover, maybe not from the days where we were still starting out as hunter-gatherers, but more recent days—the childhood kind. I like to think of myself as a rational person, a logical person, but in the middle of the night when everything’s dark and you’re listening to the strange clicks and hums of a house that isn’t your own, those childhood fears come creeping back with the smooth, serpentine movements of headlight shadows on a popcorn ceiling. Did that door move just now? Is there someone in there? Some _thing?_ Will it have long claws and glowing eyes? Teeth that barely fit in its mouth? Can it see me even now, in the dark? Will it get me if my sheets don’t perfectly cover my hands and feet?

I was stressed out. I know that. You’ve…you’ve probably caught on to what I’m setting up here. I was very, very stressed out that first night. With good reason, yes, but…as it turns out, your brain chemistry rarely cares about things as intangible as _reason_.

I must’ve fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing I knew, I was woken up by that sense that if I didn’t drink something _immediately_ , I might actually die of thirst. Groggily, I sat up in bed, feeling around for a lamp that hadn’t been unpacked yet. When I didn’t find it, I felt around for my glass of water instead. I found it and gulped it down as fast as I could. After that I felt a little better, but something was bothering me. Something didn’t feel right, if you know what I mean…I felt like I had forgotten something important, or that I’d _missed_ something, but that didn’t make any sense. It was probably just some afterimage of a dream still playing on the back of my mind, flickering like an old film reel. That sour smell was back in the air too, the one I’d noticed outside, and…and…

And that’s when I noticed the doors were open.

Not all of them—the one that led to the water heater was still shut tight—but the doors to the closets and to the hallway were all open. They weren’t just ajar, either…they were flung wide open. It didn’t look like someone had been walking through them, it looked like something had been _barging_ through them, and—

***

“And then…and then I…” Ashley kept trying to find her place, wracking her brain for what came next…until she felt the weight of _everyone’s_ eyes on her. Then her brain just locked itself up tight, snapping shut like one of the bear traps from Sam’s story. “I…um, okay, one sec, I…crap…”

On-again-off-again bickering swinging wildly back into ‘off’ territory, Emily and Jess met each other’s eyes. Their judgment was silent, but oh…

 _Oh_.

Ashley felt its sting all the same.

“I…” she cleared her throat a couple times before glancing to her side, sheepishly muttering, “Could you, um, hold this for just a—thanks,” as she handed her thermos to Matt. Could she have set it on the ground? Absolutely. Had that possibility occurred to her for even a fraction of a second? Hell no. People were _looking at her_ —she was counting her lucky stars that she was able to _blink_ and _breathe_ without some kind of assistance! She patted at her jacket, searching her pockets for…there! Triumphantly, she pulled out what she’d stashed away before even getting on the cable car.

As he caught sight of what she’d grabbed, Chris snorted a laugh so hard that he immediately began to choke on his drink.

“Ash,” Josh said, his voice full of something that was less admonishment than it was gleeful disbelief. “What is this? You gonna do some standup for us? Got a tight five you wanna run by the group, or…?”

She shot him a very short-lived glare, shuffling through the stack of notecards she’d hidden away for just such an occasion. “Look,” she began.

“Are you shitting me right now?” Beth looked between Hannah and Sam as though expecting either of them to inform her that this was in fact a joke. Neither seemed to have much to say on the matter, so she let her attention rest on Ashley again. “Please. _Please_ tell me this is part of the gag.”

“Guys, I thought we agreed we were gonna cool it on the—”

“ _Look_ ,” Ashley repeated, much more firmly that time around, everything from her neck to the tips of her ears burning red-hot despite the wind. “I was told to come up with a story, okay?! So I came up with a story! I already _said_ I’m a written-word person—sorry I can’t just fly by the seat of my pants like you guys, but…but I can’t, okay?! I can’t, so…” She lowered her head and raised her shoulders, creating something of a protective inward hunch as she scrambled to find where she’d left off.

“Remember earlier? When you guys were all ‘Hurr durr, it’s not midnight, Josh, how can we be the Midnight Society if we don’t start at midnight, Josh?’ And remember how I said if we waited until midnight we’d be up until fucking _dawn_ because someone would take three business days to get through their story?” He went quiet for a moment, looking pointedly towards the circle as he thumped Chris on the back, trying either to clear the liquid from his lungs or make it worse (no one watching could _really_ tell). “Yeah, this is what I was talking about.”

“ _Josh_ ,” Sam said sharply.

“What?! Ash knows I’m right! I didn’t say it was a _bad_ thing! Girl likes to weave lush, detailed tapestries with her words! It’s a talent! Just kinda wish maybe you’d come up with a slightly _shorter—_ ”

“Josh!” Hannah said, flinging a small handful of snow his way. “Quit it. Let her just—”

“Is Hartley dying?” Beth asked, sounding almost hopeful. “Are we gonna have to hide his corpse somewhere on the mountain? Maybe we should be brainstorming locations for shallow graves.”

“I’m…fine!” he spluttered between coughs, shoving Josh away. “You fuckers don’t…deserve the… _satisfaction_ my death would…bring you!”

Ashley let out an anxious breath, still going through her notes. “I’m sorry guys, seriously, I just…it’ll just be a second…I don’t want to miss any of the important beats, my bad, I’m sorry, I—”

“Now see, this is nepotism at its finest, people, plain and simple. Here we are, all good, hardworking individuals, forced to make our shit up as we go along, but oooh no, the A/V Club over there gets _study guides_.” Mike shook his head as though deeply disappointed. “What’s this world coming to?”

Then, shocking _everyone_ into silence, Emily spoke up. She swiveled to glance Mike’s way, coolly saying, “Okay, pause. See, here’s the problem. We all know you’re only cracking these admittedly weak-ass jokes because you’re still feeling bad about _your_ story. And that’s okay, Mike—you _should_ feel bad about your story. Because it was bad. But we all have to move on. Life continues. And I don’t know about you, but if given the choice between waiting here _all night_ listening to her flip through those cards or sitting through _half_ of your raccoon story again? I’m going with the story that’s at least promising a _modicum_ of entertainment. So,” she flapped her fingers together like a sock puppet shutting its mouth instead of finishing her sentence. She sat that way for a moment, raising her eyebrows at Mike, and then slid her eyes to the other side of the fire where Ashley was sitting. “That being said, I’d prefer _not_ to sit here all night listening to you flip through those cards, so like…if we could move it along, that’d be peachy keen.”

For a breath, all Ashley could do was jaw at the air; she wasn’t sure there’d ever been in a time in recorded history where _Emily Davis_ had stood up for her…if that was indeed what had just happened. “I, um, yeah, so…okay, here…okay.”

***

I was caught between impulses. In health class, they teach you about your sympathetic nervous system and how it feeds into your fight-or-flight response. In times of stress, or anger, or fear, your adrenal glands dump adrenaline into your body, filling you with the energy you need to stand your ground and face whatever’s threatening you…or to turn tail and flee. Here’s the thing about that, those lessons usually gloss over the fact that there’s a third option in those scenarios: Freeze. It’s not really fight-or-flight, it’s fight-or-flight-or-freeze.

And I froze.

All at once I was more awake than I could ever remember being in my life. The light from the highway, the streetlamps and the headlights, they didn’t exactly illuminate my room, but they lit it enough that I could see every last detail of the walls, the doors, the carpeting, _everything_.

I sat there in my bed, my cup of water still grasped tightly against my chest, and for what could’ve been ten seconds or ten years, I just froze. I held my breath and strained my ears, desperately trying to determine whether something— _anything_ —else in the apartment was moving…but the mad thumping of my heart was the only thing I could hear. I hadn’t unpacked my clock yet and I’d left my phone charging on the other side of the room, so I couldn’t tell what time it was when I finally thought I was capable of moving.

Slowly. Carefully. I slid one leg out of my bed, then the other. I set my feet on the ground. My muscles were weak with sleep and that seemed _ridiculous_ to me, considering how furiously my brain was moving and how _hard_ my heart was pounding, but it was true. Walking to my light switch felt like running in a nightmare, the carpet full of little grasping hooks, the air itself replaced by molasses…still, I got there, and I turned the lights on, and I saw…my room.

I didn’t want to, I don’t think it’s possible for me to stress that enough, I didn’t _want_ to, but I peeked into my closets. First the one next to my bed, then the one across from it, but nothing seemed out of place. My clothes were still hanging in the first, a pile of unpacked boxes sat in the second. There weren’t any monsters with glowing yellow eyes curled up in the corners waiting to strike.

I poked my head out of my room and into the rest of the apartment, and when nothing jumped out at me, I did a slow walk-around. The windows were closed, the stick was under the front door’s knob, the light from under my mom’s bedroom door was off, but…the light. It clicked in my head then that there was _light_.

It was coming from the kitchen, too dim to be the overheads or a lamp, though still bright enough for me to notice, and when I pushed the door open to get a look in there…I saw that the fridge was open. Again, just like in my room, it wasn’t open all the way, but it was open enough that the light was on. I got closer and saw someone had made short work of what had been left of the pizza we’d ordered for dinner that night. The box was still in there, but it was open too, and uh…hmm.

Sleep-eating was a new one for me, but I’d sure woken up pretty thirsty, hadn’t I? Ugh. More than anything, I was embarrassed. I mean, even if I didn’t tell Mom about the doors—and I wasn’t going to tell her about the doors, trust me on that—I was going to have to explain why the only leftovers we had were pizza crusts.

I felt better after the whole thing, though. Stupid, obviously, I felt really stupid, but better. I brushed my teeth again, went to bed, and that was that.

Or so I thought.

I woke up the next morning to a note stuck on my bathroom door—a familiar piece of our old life that made me smile. It read: _Ran to the store to pick up some groceries since SOMEONE pigged out on our pizza!_ , and I have to admit, if it hadn’t been for the little smiley face she drew beneath it, I probably would’ve felt pretty dumb. But hey, now she knew about my late-night snack, so that was one thing I didn’t have to worry about, right?

I grabbed a towel and stepped into the bathroom, running the shower until it was nice and hot before I stepped in. Almost immediately, I was faced with another unexpected—and unpleasant—reality of the new apartment. The bathroom fan had whirred softly for the first few minutes it was on…but right around minute four or five, it started making an awful grinding noise. It sounded like a garbage disposal with a dislodged screw, or maybe the last rattling breath of a dying man hooked up to an iron lung.

***

“Not to interrupt,” Josh said, interrupting, “But I’d like to propose a…let’s call it a potential improvement for the next time we have one of these fun little story nights, hmm? How about…we all promise that we’ll take a few minutes to learn what shit is and isn’t commonly recognized in today’s day and age vis à vis medical advancements, huh gang?”

When the story had hit a snag because of her own mistake, Ashley had been mortified. Now that it was _Josh’s_ fault? Yeah, a slightly different story; she was about a hundred pounds of indignation wearing fur-lined boots and a striped beanie that time around. “Oh shut it!”

He pointed to Chris, saying only, “Consumption,” as though it were some kind of witch’s curse. Then he turned his accusatory finger to _her_ , saying, “Iron lung,” in much the same way. “Do you know what year it is? Either of you?”

She pursed her lips and folded her arms across her chest, squinting her eyes in righteous exasperation. “Chris,” Ashley began, “Was _absolutely_ wrong.”

“Hey!”

“My saying it sounded like someone on an iron lung isn’t incorrect—it’s a specific sound! A sound that, excuse me, while maybe not terribly common today, is _so_ not the same as like, the sound of a modern ventilator or anything!”

“It’s _also_ ,” Josh said, leaning in over Chris’s lap so his scorn was that much closer to her, “A sound none of us can fucking imagine because we’re not _octogenarians_ , Ash.”

Their standoff lasted for another few moments like that, no one else in the circle particularly excited to say anything that might bring their attention onto them instead. No one wanted that kind of vocab lesson. There wasn’t a joke or a witty aside in the world worth a combined Washington-Brown verbal smackdown, that much was for damn sure. So they sat in silence, save for the crackling of the fire, neither Josh nor Ashley backing down.

After the better part of a minute, the story picked up where it left off. Ashley defiantly held Josh’s gaze for several sentences before he finally rolled his eyes and waved her off like an especially bothersome gnat.

***

I hadn’t lathered up my hair yet, so I quickly hopped out of the shower and hit the switch to turn the fan off. The bathroom would get super foggy and damp, I knew, but I could handle _one_ shower like that. What I hadn’t expected, though, was that as soon as I turned the fan off, that awful musty smell I’d noticed the day before came back with a vengeance. Even surrounded by soap and other scented things as I was, it cut through the air like a knife made out of rotting garbage. Eugh…it was probably coming from the pipes. Mom and I would have to put a note in with maintenance later and get it taken care of ASAP, because wow that was a heck of a stink. Still, I wasn’t too worried about it. If I only breathed through my mouth it wasn’t that bad, and honestly, without the fan whining, I was kind of glad for the relative peace after last night’s scare. All I could hear was the shower running—the hiss of the spray, the quiet trickle of the drain, the…

The bang of a cupboard being closed.

I nearly jumped out of my skin, and that time I _had_ been lathering my hair up, so I got plenty of shampoo suds in my eyes for my trouble. “Hi Mom!” I called as I blindly reached past the shower curtain to wipe the soap from my face with a corner of my towel. I blinked a couple times once I’d gotten rid of the worst of it, and frowned when I didn’t hear a response from outside. “HI MOM!” I called again, raising my voice to just a step below shouting.

No response. But…another cupboard shut. I rolled my eyes and went back to rinsing myself off. _Duly noted,_ I thought to myself, _The shower must be too loud for her to hear me_. This apartment just kept getting better and better.

With the promise of fresh groceries, and therefore breakfast, I hurried through the rest of my shower, finishing up and turning the tap off before wringing my hair out and stepping onto the cushy bath mat to wrap my towel around myself. The bathroom was so steamy that it was positively _tropical_ , and even if it didn’t actually happen that way, I couldn’t help but laugh at the mental image of my mom watching me emerge surrounded by a cartoonish puff of mist like I’d been sitting in a sauna while she was out shopping.

“So what’s for breakfast?” I asked, stepping into the main room of the apartment, leaning to the side to see…um…well…

The kitchen was empty. The door was open and the room itself was dark, and more to the point, there weren’t any shopping bags on the table. That, and my mom’s shoes were still missing from the doormat.

Suddenly I was very aware of my nakedness. I could feel each and every drop of water running down my back from my still-wet hair, I could feel the chill of the air around my ankles. I clutched my towel tighter to my chest and took a tentative step forward, not really sure why I wasn’t fleeing into the safety of my room, but I guess some part of me just wanted to be doubly sure that I was alone.

I poked my head into my mom’s bedroom and found it completely empty. Her bed was made, all her boxes were all set neatly against one wall, and nothing was out of place. I crept carefully into her bathroom and it was much the same. I stared at the shower curtain drawn across the length of her tub, and like an expendable character in the first ten minutes of a horror movie, I found myself reaching for it. It was like…it was like my hand was drawn to it, my fingers itching for the fabric even as my mind _screamed_ at me to stop, stop, stop, please just _stop!_ There wasn’t anything behind that curtain—there couldn’t be. But…

But what if there _was?_

What would I _do?_ Where would I _go?_ I was just a girl in a towel, my hair still dripping from my shower, and…and as I reached for it, the shower curtain seemed to ripple, to _move_ , like there was something breathing on the other side of it, something—

_BANG!_

That was the same sound I’d heard before, the sound I’d thought had been a cupboard closing but…only that time it didn’t actually sound like it was coming from the kitchen. It had come from somewhere in the apartment for sure, but not the kitchen.

I gave the shower curtain one last look...and then dropped my hand, feeling stupid as I scurried back out into the main room.

_BANG!_

Do you know that feeling you get when you’re scared? Really and truly _terrified?_ The way your body goes hot and cold all over at the same time and your joints turn to pudding and your skin doesn’t fit on your bones? That’s how I felt when I heard that second bang.

Because I realized it had come from _my room_.

I couldn’t bring myself to move. Not at first. I couldn’t remember where I’d left my phone, and in that moment there was nothing I wanted more than to hear my mom’s voice telling me I was being stupid and everything was going to be okay. I hated myself for not thinking to bring a change of clothes with me before I got in the shower, and I hated myself for not having my phone, but mostly I hated myself for how small and helpless and _scared_ I felt as I stood in front of the coffee table, staring wide-eyed into the open doorway of my bedroom.

_BANG!_

I jumped as though I’d been slapped, my adrenal glands dumping an impossible deluge of terror into my blood, and driven by that blind, horrified surge of instinctual panic, I charged into my room.

And of course there was no one in there. It was a reprisal of the journey into my mom’s room—everything was exactly as I’d left it. Except…

Except the carpet in front of the water heater looked disturbed. Had…had I done that last night while wandering through the apartment? Again, completely in the clutches of my adrenaline, I grabbed the knob to the door and tried it, and just like every time before, found it totally and completely stuck fast. That was almost a relief, really, only I didn’t get a chance to exhale.

_BANG!_

My head whipped around towards the source of the noise, and…oh. _Oh_.

Now I felt like a _complete_ moron. The noise was coming not from the water heater’s room, but instead the utility closet next to it. The doors to that closet, I’ll remind you, stood wide open from my little nocturnal adventure the night before, so I could clearly see there was nothing—and _no one_ —inside of it. Besides my unpacked boxes, obviously.

I sighed a heavy breath and all the tension ran out of me in a wave that left me feeling exhausted and weak. I was an idiot. A complete and utter rube. I held my towel closed around myself as I stepped into the closet and, acting on a suspicion I had, pressed my ear to the back wall. The wall, I’ll mention here, that we shared with our next-door neighbors. From the other side I could hear a faint rustling…then a low buzz like maybe someone was talking, and—

_BANG!_

Even though I’d been expecting it, I nearly fell over that time, my feet tangling up in the boxes stashed away in there, and it was only sheer dumb luck that kept me from face-planting right into my school stuff.

Not even a second later, I heard the front door swing open and the familiar crinkle of plastic grocery bags. “Hey there, Sleeping Beauty!” my mom called to me, “Come help me with these, would you?”

I was only too glad to help, hoping that some heavy lifting might exorcise at least _some_ of the nervous energy in my arms and legs. I got dressed as quickly as I could and joined her at the door, holding my arms out for her to pile up with bags. Still, something must’ve shown on my face because as she handed me the first bag of groceries, she gave me a funny look and asked if I was feeling all right.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to laugh at myself but finding it difficult to manage. “But I think the neighbors are going to be a problem.”

“Tale as old as time,” she sighed, and that was that.

But that night was when the dreams started.

***

“Wait—” There was a sound of rustling fabric as Jess turned around where she sat, Matt soon doing the same. The two of them looked over their shoulders towards the darkened tree line, Jess’s mouth half-open, Matt raising one of his hands to keep the others from saying anything. After a beat, they looked at one another and it was obvious that some sort of agreement passed between them.

The others, though, were left to watch them with varying degrees of confusion.

“Uh…? Everything…okay over there?” Beth asked finally, cocking her head to the side to try and peer around the fire.

“You guys didn’t _hear that?_ ”

“Oh Jesus Christ.” With a groan twice as exasperated as it needed to be, Emily set her drink down into the snow bank behind her, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ears. “Not _this_ shit again…”

Raising her voice in a bid to stem the oncoming argument, Sam leaned in line with Beth, asking, “Did we hear what, guys? I was just listening to Ash, I really didn’t—”

“I swear to God I heard footsteps! From like…just over there! They sounded like, close. Like really, _really_ close!”

“Yeah, I did too,” Matt chimed in. “At first I thought it was just the wind in the trees or something, but it was definitely footsteps.”

“Guys. Seriously. Come on. We’ve been over this.” Despite everyone else craning their heads around to try and get a glimpse of whatever may or may not have been creeping around in the trees, Josh seemed content enough to stay where he was, picking the toasted skin off of a marshmallow with his fingers before dropping it into his mouth. “It’s probably an animal, as we are, I will remind you, in the _fucking woods_.”

Though it was clear that everyone (Sam most of all) was bracing for round two of the bear conversation to rear its ugly, fuzzy head, Jess whipped around with an indignant pout. “It wasn’t an animal! It sounded like a _person_ walking around!”

“…a person?” Hannah asked, teeth bared in an anxious grimace.

“…a person,” Mike deadpanned.

“And, um, how exactly do you tell the difference between an animal walking in the snow and a human walking in the snow?” Emily folded her arms over her chest and finally gave in, leaning just enough that she could peek towards the woods around Jess’s head. “Considering you’re the person who can’t tell her left from her right half the time, _and_ that you were drunkenly talking about your genuine fear of voyeuristic raccoons earlier, without a shred of irony I might add, you’ll understand if I’m a little—”

“Oh _shut up!_ ” Turning around again, Jess leaned as far back as she could without falling off the bench entirely. “Animals walk on four legs, dumbass, so when they walk it’s like…tap-tap, tap-tap. This was a _completely_ different sound! I know what people sound like when they walk!”

Chris looked up from his drink so suddenly that Ashley groaned long before he could open his mouth. There was a joke a-brewing, that much was obvious, and _God,_ the chances of it being a good one were slim and none. “ _I_ know an animal that walks like a man,” he said cryptically, his eyes going wide behind the lenses of his glasses as he turned towards Josh.

There was a beat of silence as they met each other’s eyes. Then, in perfect unison, they spoke the name: “ _Bigfoot_.”

“Yeah, no, okay, no.” Ashley took a drink from her thermos as she shook her head, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand before assuming her storytelling position once more. “Nope, nope, nope. Cannot and will not go down that road again. I refuse. Pointblank.”

“But Ash…he _is_ bipedal, so—”

“Wait, Bigfoot’s bi?”

“Matt. Please. For the love of God, don’t fucking encourage them.”

“I said I refuse. Now hush.” She glanced over to Matt and Jess before turning to the woods, but when there was nothing but silence, she shrugged. “Maybe it _was_ just the wind in the trees?” she offered, and when no one said anything, she quietly cleared her throat. “Okay, back to it, I guess…”

***

I told you I’m used to sleepwalking, and I am, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that sleeping problems…they tend to sort of be a one-a-pop kind of deal. I don’t grind my teeth, I don’t have restless legs, and I’ve never, _ever_ experienced night terrors or sleep paralysis or anything like that, so when the nightmares started I really…I didn’t know what to do.

That night I woke up, or thought I woke up, when I felt the prickly weight of someone watching me. That feeling of someone looking at you, someone’s eyes on you, you really can’t mistake it for anything else. I recognized that feeling immediately and I was so terrified that I strained every last one of my muscles to make sure I kept my eyes closed as tightly as possible. I didn’t want to see it, whatever was looking at me, I didn’t want to see the tiniest, teeniest sliver of it, so I screwed my eyes shut tight and gripped my fitted sheet and tried to wake up, I tried so _hard_ to wake up…

But then I heard it.

I _heard_ it.

There was a low, raspy, grinding noise from just above me, heavy and rattling. In my rational mind, the part of my brain that was at least a little awake, I knew I was probably just remembering the awful sound the bathroom fan had made, but still it was…it was just different enough to make me wonder. It wasn’t a metal-on-metal sound but an _organic_ one, like I was hearing something breathing, something sick, each inhale phlegmatic and wet, each exhale a rumbling growl, and it was close. God, it was…it was _close_ , and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know _what to do_.

I needed to keep my eyes closed because I didn’t want to see the thing, but I needed to get out of bed. I needed to get out of my _room_ , I needed to run as fast as I could run to get somewhere, _anywhere_ , where I was safe. I needed to get to my mom, I needed to get out of this thing’s reach, I needed to _escape_ , but all of my muscles were locked up with terror and sleep and all the nasty, wispy things that live between those two spaces.

The longer I laid there in my bed, not able to move even to twitch, the more sure I became of something unspeakable: There was a warmth slowly but surely growing closer and closer to my face. It was reaching for me.

It was going to _touch me_.

My body moved in one horrible lurch as I pushed myself off of the bed and ran, the air thick as syrup and my feet like cinderblocks whenever I tried to lift them. I was dragging myself farther and farther from my room, from the thing that had been watching me, reaching for me, trying to get me, and—

And then something grabbed me from behind. I could feel its fingers digging into my shoulders, forcing me to turn around, and when it pulled me to face it, I saw…I saw my mom. She was shaking me just a little bit, asking me if I was okay, and when she flicked the light on I realized I had made it all the way to the front door before she’d woken me up.

It took her a good ten, fifteen minutes to calm me down. She got me some water, sat me on the couch, rubbed my back, all that good mom stuff. “Relax…” she told me just as the shaking in my hands was beginning to subside, “Relax…it’s fine, everything’s fine!” There was other stuff too, stuff about how she was sure this was my brain trying to deal with the stress of moving, that I was probably just as worried about Gram and Gramps as she was, and that it would all pass and go back to normal before I knew it. And I couldn’t argue. That sounded…well, that sounded perfectly rational.

When I was calm again—not completely, but enough—Mom helped me up and took me back to my room. I went to get back into my bed, to have her tuck me in like I was a little kid again, and…and then she stopped me.

“Oh, honey!” she said, bending down to inspect my bed. “You must’ve cut yourself, are you all right?”

That didn’t make any sense to me at first. Not until I followed her line of sight and saw the faint reddish-brown smears on the edge of my pillowcase. It wasn’t big and it wasn’t dark, but it was there, and it was hard to tell because of the color of my sheets, but it did really look like blood. More specifically, it sort of looked like…part of a bloody hand. Like someone had gingerly dragged a few of their fingers along my pillow, and…

The memory of my nightmare hit me full-force between the eyes, and for a second there I genuinely thought I might faint dead away.

“Oh,” I said as I looked at it, and then stepped back when I saw a couple more speckles of it on the carpeting right next to my feet. “I don’t…think I did…” And I focused as hard as I could, trying to feel whether I had a little cut somewhere, a scrape or a nick where maybe I’d banged my hand or leg against the bedframe while getting up to run away. I couldn’t feel anything then, and I didn’t find anything when I went to shower the next morning either, but I was tired and sleepy and still pretty freaked out, and all that fear had drained the energy out of me and left nothing in its place but exhaustion, so I let my mom tuck me in, and I made a note to wash my sheets the next day.

The problem was…the nightmares didn’t stop after that. If anything, they got worse.

It became an almost nightly thing for me—I’d fall asleep, I’d feel like something was watching me, and I’d be seized by the most intense, primal panic of my life. It was a little different every night, but there were always similarities…I’d hear the click and creak of a door opening, I’d hear that terrible death rattling sound, and there’d always be that oppressive, awful feeling of something standing right there, staring at me from just inches away…but sometimes I’d think I’d smell that smell that would come through the pipes, and it would be so close and so thick I’d _taste_ it like garbage in my mouth, and sometimes I’d feel like my heavy comforter was being slowly pulled at and sometimes I’d hear footsteps, and…every time, like clockwork, I’d wake up somewhere else in the apartment. One time I even managed to yank away that stick under the front door. My mom said she thought I was trying to break out.

I probably was.

Living there during the day only got harder, as I’m sure you can imagine. When you’re not sleeping well, everything feels harder. On bad days, it feels downright impossible. I did the things I was supposed to do, though, the things my mom said would help me get back into the swing of things faster; I unpacked my boxes and set my room up the way I liked, I washed my sheets, we put in a whole handful of tickets to maintenance to take care of just… _everything_ , and that was supposed to help. I was supposed to feel better, more at ease.

But I didn’t. Not at all. Now, maybe it was my tired mind playing tricks on me and maybe it wasn’t, but I started noticing things as I set about doing all these domestic tasks, things that didn’t sit well in my gut.

I noticed more of that brownish, reddish staining, the stuff that could’ve been blood but I guess could’ve been other stuff too. I’d washed it off my sheets without any problem, but it would turn up in the strangest places. On the carpeting, mostly, around my closet doors and in the grout of the kitchen tile near the fridge and pantry. One morning I saw a smear of it along the very corner of my bathroom mirror. That made me think maybe it was some kind of mildew, just another problem we’d need to talk to the super about.

I also noticed that nothing ever really stayed where I left it. Things weren’t getting thrown across the room, that’s not what I mean, but a book I’d put on my table before bed would somehow scoot itself a few inches to the left when I woke up. Stuff like that. It felt like…it felt like even the food in the pantry was being subtly rearranged, like we could put things wherever we wanted, my mom and I, but they wouldn’t stay there for too long. Like someone else had a _better_ idea of where they should go.

The biggest thing, though, the thing that really sort of stuck with me the most, was the next-door neighbors. In the week or so we’d been there, we hadn’t seen them once, but boy they’d been loud! All that banging and rummaging and the quiet, unintelligible hum of voices. That led me to believe that maybe our walls were a bit thinner than we’d first expected, and hey, considering everything else that was going on with the apartment, that wasn’t really too much of a shock. And I…didn’t like that thought. I didn’t like that thought because I knew for a _fact_ I’d woken up shrieking like a banshee every night the past week, and they must’ve thought I was an absolute _maniac_.

So I did something I’ve never really done before. I took it upon myself to kind of…introduce us to the neighbors. I figured maybe that was the way to do it, you know, the adult way to handle the situation so I didn’t have to rely on my mom going “Hi, hello, we’re the new family in the unit next-door, sorry that my daughter wails in the middle of the night like a vengeful ghost haunting the moors until someone solves her untimely murder, we’re kind of working on that.”

It was a weekend, and the cold snap I’d felt in the air last week had turned into an actual chill by then, so I bundled myself up and stepped outside, closing our door but leaving it unlocked as I walked over to the next door and knocked. And knocked again.

It was about the time I realized they didn’t have a welcome mat in front of their door that I heard a creak from behind me, and I turned around to see a kindly looking middle-aged lady step out of the door across the hall. She—

***

“Looked like Laura Dern, maybe?” Chris snickered, throwing Sam a pointed glance from over the fire.

“No, Meryl Streep,” Ashley said without missing a beat, reaching over to her left and grabbing the zipper of Chris’s parka, forcing it up another few inches to cover his mouth. “Now hush.”

***

She smiled when she saw me, though I could tell she didn’t really understand what I was doing there. “Oh, hello!” she said brightly, “Are you…looking for someone?”

“Um, yeah, I guess I am,” I laughed, feeling more than a tiny bit stupid as I turned away from the door and towards her instead. “Hi, my mom and I just moved into the unit over there, and I was hoping to say hello to the…” I pointed over my shoulder to the door again, “…neighbors over here. I’m kind of worried we’ve been making a lot of noise lately, what with moving in and stuff, and I sort of wanted to apologize too.”

She laughed a little bit, and even still I could see that same confusion there. “I don’t think you need to worry about apologizing to anyone, hon,” she smiled, “That unit’s empty. I’m pretty sure it’s just us on this floor right now, and _I_ haven’t heard anything, so—”

I didn’t hear what she said after that, to be honest. I sort of…couldn’t.

“Empty?” I asked, probably interrupting whatever she was saying, “You mean…there’s no one living in there?”

“That’s usually what empty means,” she said with that same smile. I got the feeling she thought maybe I was younger than I actually was—I have that kind of face, and I’m pretty small, so it’s a mistake a lot of people make. “The last person who lived there…” she seemed to think about it for a second, “I guess she left a little under a month ago. She was strange. I mean, not to gossip. She was one of those people who did the whole…” and then she gestured towards the door, “…salt on the ground and crystals all around, that sort of wishy-washy stuff. Trust me, you and your mom would probably have to listen to her rant on and on about… _spirits_ and _demons_ and all that if she were still around. You’re not missing much.”

I smiled. And I made small talk until she excused herself to go check her mail. I was the picture of neighborly kindness. But as I stepped back inside the apartment, I felt my stomach cramp and lurch and I hung my head over the kitchen sink for fear I might puke.

If there was no one in the apartment next to ours, what was making all the noises I’d been hearing?

How was I hearing someone _talk?_

That night, the nightmare was worse. Unlike every other time before, I woke up not knowing why I was up or even what had scared me so badly—I just knew that I needed to be running, and I needed to get _out, out, out_ …suddenly I was falling, dropping through the air, and then someone was screaming and I couldn’t pull in a breath…

I woke up outside. In the hallway. I don’t know how I’d done it, but I’d managed to pull the stick aside, undo two locks, a deadbolt, and whipped the front door open in my sleep. I was face-first on the ground and my mouth was full of blood, and between my mom’s yelling at the clamor of the neighbor across the way coming out to see what was happening, I was able to piece together that the bleeding wasn’t any of my teeth, thank God, but my nose. I’d fallen, I guess, over the threshold and my nose had cushioned most of the fall for me.

As I sat there spouting blood down my front, my heart racing from a nightmare I couldn’t remember, my sinuses on fire from what had happened to my nose, I guess I completely broke down. I told my mom about the noises, the voices, the smell that came from the pipes, the strange smears of what could’ve been blood but could’ve been any number of things, and I’m sure she was embarrassed as she sat there trying to help my mom with me, but I told her about what the neighbor had said about ghosts or spirits or demons and how the last person to live next to us had left so suddenly, and…

And that’s how I ended up in the ER getting my nose set and an MRI of my brain. Anticlimactic, right? Yeah, well, between the nightmares and the sleepwalking, and now the talk of demons, my mom was…concerned, to say the least. But the doctors didn’t see anything wrong with my head, so they sent me home with a little bottle of painkillers and a referral for a sleep therapist.

In a way, that actually made me feel better. I mean, the thought that maybe all of this was just in my head, that it was a problem I could go talk with a professional about and perhaps get over in time—or at least learn to live with—it helped me feel okay. Not good, not great, but okay. Mom was great about it too: She made a point to stop and get us lunch at my favorite greasy fast food place because she knew it’d make me smile even if my tasting was a little off from the whole nose thing.

It had been a crazy day away from the apartment, and even as Mom stuck the key in the lock and threw the door open wide for us to walk in, I figured I could learn to deal with the weirdness, whatever it was, and if nothing else, the meds the doctors had given me would probably help me sleep, so…I thought things were going to go back to normal. Or, you know, we would find a _new_ normal to settle into.

Except all hope of that was shattered into a million tiny pieces as we stepped into the apartment and saw a pair of wild, bloodshot eyes staring back at us from the kitchen doorway.

Time slowed until it stopped. The world became a photograph—the details scorched into the air in brilliant contrast, everything hung frozen in the air.

And then the man in the kitchen made to lunge towards us and Mom pulled me outside again, yanking the door shut behind us.

The police arrived in record time.

We never really found out who he was. I mean, we _did_ , the police were able to identify him, but it didn’t _help_. He wasn’t a tenant or a maintenance worker or anything like that. He was just… _someone_. Someone who had found that the complex’s HVAC units were all connected, meaning there’d be just enough space to live between the pipes and the drywall. Someone who’d been doing that long enough to know when it was safe to come out and when it wasn’t. Someone who’d figured out the best way to barricade the door to the water heater from the _inside,_ so we could never get in but he could easily get out. Someone who’d eaten our food and left stains on our floors. Someone who’d heard us through the walls and watched us when it was dark. Someone who stood over my bed while I slept at night.

We broke our lease—that probably shouldn’t come as a surprise—and we found somewhere else to live. A different neighborhood, a different complex, a different _everything_. Our new apartment is nice, and it’s still very close to where my grandparents live in case they need our help, but it’s not home. It will never _be_ home. I’m not sure _anything_ will ever feel like home again…not for me.

I never found out if that stick we lodged under the door kept people from breaking in. Maybe it would’ve, maybe it wouldn’t’ve, who knows. What I _do_ know is that there are more important safety measures to take before you fall asleep; it’s not just about locking the doors and shutting the windows. Sometimes, when it’s really quiet and the stars haven’t come out yet, I grit my jaw, gather up all my courage, and press my ear up against each of the walls in my room, one by one.

And I pray to God I don’t hear anything moving on the other side.

***

The silence that had followed Mike’s story had not been kind. The silence that followed _Ashley’s_ story, however, was nothing short of _reverent_. It was as though she had just delivered a sermon at the holy horror pulpit and the rest of them were worshippers too struck by awe to utter their amens.

And then, through the fingers of the hand she’d clamped over her mouth, Jess spoke. “I’m not…going to sleep…for _a week_.”

That seemed to break the dam.

“No,” Hannah said and just kept saying, her hands held up to either side of her head, “No, no, no, no, nonononononononono…no! _No!_ I…” she turned to Beth, her eyebrows drawn high and tightly together, “There are too many rooms in the lodge to _check!_ I… _God!_ ”

“Han, I really don’t think there are any creepy old hermit men hiding in the lodge, okay?” Sam answered instead of Beth, leaning over to set a hand on one of her legs. “Other than, you know…”

“Josh,” Beth finished for her.

“Yeah. Other than Josh.”

The brother in question, it stood to be noted, had leaned himself over Chris and was currently making as though he was going to kiss Ashley full on the mouth, if only she’d stop shoving him away like she was trying so desperately to do. “Marry me, Ashley Brown,” he joked, “Run away with me tonight. _That_ ,” he said, pointing at her with all the impassioned flourish of a snake-oil salesman when one last push sent him rocking back into his seat, “ _That_ is what I’m fucking talking about! _That_ is an appreciation for the goddamn _art!_ Man in the walls! MAN IN THE WALLS!”

Ashley, blushing from toe to tip for decidedly different reasons now, made a small noise of doubt before turning away with a tiny, sheepish laugh. “Oh please…” she joked, though it was perfectly obvious she was thrilled beyond belief.

“That was—Ash?—that was so deeply, _deeply_ fucking unsettling,” Chris cut in. “I-I-I feel like it’s my duty as the second oldest here to like, ask if you’re doing okay. Any problems at home? Any recent head injuries that might’ve inspired something like that? You can tell me. I’ll listen. Scout’s honor.”

“Oh _please!_ ” she said again, taking a long drink from her thermos, both to wet her whistle and give her a valid reason not to respond to any of them.

“No, I am so serious,” Hannah continued under her breath, her glasses fogging the more she talked, “I’m gonna have to check every room in the lodge to make sure no one’s like, hiding under the beds! Or in the closets! Or just like…in the corner, and… _eugh!_ How’m I supposed to _sleep?_ ”

Sam and Beth exchanged a glance, both struggling (but ultimately winning) against the urge to roll their eyes as they patted her back. “Again…I _realllllly_ don’t think we have to worry about any creepy old men hiding anywhere near here, so—”

That’s when Hannah looked over to Beth, and that’s when the twin-thing kicked into overdrive. “But…” she started, only for Beth to immediately cut her off.

“She’s right. There’s no one out here but us. Remember?” She held her sister’s gaze for maybe a moment longer than she needed to, but no one else seemed to notice, so enthralled were they in talking over themselves about Ashley’s story. “Dad said we’d be. All. _Alone_. This weekend. Right?”

Hannah’s expression morphed into one of uncertainty before she simply nodded, dropping her eyes from Beth’s.

Having apparently recovered from her initial shock, Jess leaned over Matt’s lap, setting one of her hands on his shoulder for balance as she asked Ashley, “Could I maybe pay you to write something like that for me? I have this stupid paper in my creative writing class due at the end of the month, and…wow!”

It was clear at once that Ashley wasn’t especially accustomed to this much attention—or this much _positive_ attention, at the very least. She blinked at Jess, her eyes nearly as wide as her mouth, and then managed to somehow pull herself together. “I, um…you definitely don’t have to _pay me_ , I…”

“Cool! Just like, don’t use that many big words, maybe? They’d probably catch on if all of a sudden I started talking like a ner—”

“Okay, truly, this blossoming girl-crush is touching and all,” Josh interrupted, “But we’ve reached an important part of the night, folks. Those in favor of accepting The Tale of the Somnambulist—”

“ _Just_ The Somnambulist! I’m not doing this with you again.”

“—into the annals of the Midnight Society?”

A cluck of a tongue answered the question. “Seriously?” Emily asked, her hands jammed into her pockets as she looked Josh’s way through the fire, “I think it’s pretty obvious that anyone who says no is just…” her eyes flicked momentarily towards Mike, “…a _moron_.” She looked Ashley’s way then, her expression inscrutable until a corner of her mouth ticked up in a smirk that was unquestionably _impressed_. “Welcome to the club, I guess. You must be very, very proud.”

“I, um…” Ashley paused as somewhere from within the woods, the haunting baying of a wolf started up. Just as they all had before, the lot of them turned their eyes towards the trees as though expecting to see the creature in question just outside the light of the bonfire, and as they did, a _second_ wolf answered the first. “I am,” she finished quietly, though it sounded as if quite a bit of the wind had been taken out of her sails.

Chuckling, Matt rocked in his seat just enough to nudge Ashley with his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said, lowering his voice into a confidential, joking register. “I’m pretty sure that’s just the spirit of the woods casting _its_ vote too.” He winked when she looked his way. “My story only got _one_ wolf howl, so…if I were you? I think I’d be pretty psyched.”

She laughed after a moment, and by the time the echoes of the howls quieted beneath the incessant whistling of the wind, the rest of them had more or less forgotten about it entirely. There were lots of things that lived in the woods, after all…and most of them made noise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, y'all didn't think I'd let you escape this fic without a good, chonky chapter or two, did you??? Did you?!?!??!?!
> 
> Hmm...I wonder, I wonder...who'll be next? ;)c


	11. Emily’s Story: The Tale of the Girl With My Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant tags for this chapter: Alcohol/drinking, insulting language (i.e., bitch)

“All right,” Emily sighed once the last of their chatter died out, “My _plan_ had been to wait until someone royally fucked up so I could take my turn after them, but obviously I missed my window, so…” She didn’t seem to notice the look that passed between Chris and Ashley at _that_ revelation. “I guess I can follow that standing ovation instead.”

“How _brave_ of you!” Jess pretended to gasp before snickering.

Whether or not she noticed the comment (and chances were slim she _hadn’t_ , given she and Jess were sitting side by side), there was no telling. Emily remained perfectly impassive, continuing to talk as though she were the only one out there in front of the fire. “But since I can’t stress enough how _very_ little I want to be out here for the rest of the night, with God as my witness, I will personally _destroy_ anyone who interrupts me. Got it? Fantastic. So here’s my story: The Girl—”

“Hey, Em, aren’t you forgetting something?”

She didn’t bother looking at Sam mostly because she already knew what she’d see if she did: namely, her eyes darting to and from Josh as her usual ‘let’s-all-get-along’ smile tugged at her mouth. And mmm, no, she was _so_ not in the mood. Maybe she would’ve humored Josh’s crap earlier in the night (doubtful), but now that she’d been sitting in the cold, blustery wind all night listening to the mountain’s mysterious wildlife pop in and out? Please. _Puh-lease_. “Yeah, no, I’m not doing that crap.”

“What a surprise… _someone_ thinks she’s too good to play along with the rest of us!” The rolling of Jess’s eyes was absolutely _audible_. “Shocker!”

Instead of dignifying that childish quip with a response, Emily held her hand up, her palm forming a wall between her and Jess. “Here’s my story—”

“Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society…” Josh and Sam murmured almost (but not quite) in unison.

“—the story of—”

“…the _Tale_ of…”

She still didn’t acknowledge them, but there was no use ignoring the stress headache beginning to blossom at the base of her skull. She could’ve been in Aspen. She could’ve been skiing. She could’ve been drinking _champagne_. “—the Girl With My Face.”

“ _Um?_ ” Beth objected, looking towards Hannah and then back to Emily as the fire was fed yet another handful of pine needles. “Rude?!”

***

The day started like any other. I woke up, ate some breakfast, took a shower, and then went to get dressed and put my makeup on. Other than not having any classes that day, everything was totally and completely normal.

I heard a noise from the bathroom and realized, duh, I’d left my phone in there, no doubt still in its stereo dock, so I finished getting dressed and popped my head back in there just to grab it. The notification I’d heard turned out to be a text from one of my friends, and I groaned when I saw what it said.

“OMG why won’t you answer me?” she’d texted.

I checked my phone and like I thought, I didn’t have aaany missed calls. Or texts. Or anything.

 _Great_ , I thought to myself, _It’s like ten-thirty in the morning and this bitch is already wasted. Couldn’t even wait until lunch to get shitfaced, huh? Sounds about right. Now_ there’s _a responsible adult._

I started to text her back and of course that’s the exact second I got a fucking eyelash stuck in my eye. Typical. Awful and typical. People always think that having long eyelashes is some kind of blessing, but let me tell you right now, it’s _not_. It’s definitely not worth it. So fine, whatever, I called her instead of texting back, putting the phone on speaker before setting it down on my nightstand. While it rang I leaned over to use the mirror above my nightstand, holding my eye open with two fingers to find the lash in question.

I had _just_ found it when she picked up. “Really?” she asked me without so much as a hello, and I wasn’t totally shocked because, again, day drinking.

“Yeah, hello to you too,” I answered, “The hell did you mean in that text? I haven’t heard from you since last night.”

I could hear her do one of her little ‘uh huh, sure’ laughs, and that shit always drove me up the fucking _wall_ , like Jesus Christ, listening to her laugh was like listening to a whole class of kindergartners run their sticky little uncut nails down a chalkboard, but I was too busy blinking and poking at my eye to really respond.

“Funny! And like, sooo cute! You won’t even look at me when I’m shouting your freaking name and _waving to you_ , but you can call me and give me attitude. Okay. Sure. Suuuper mature.”

“Waving at m…okay, yeah, _someone’s_ been hitting the mimosas,” I said, and then finally got that godawful eyelash out of my eye. The relief was like, amazing, but I’d totally fucked my eyeliner by digging around like that, so I had to fix that before I could even think about stepping outside.

On the other end of the phone, she was quiet for a second, which was a goddamn relief in and of itself…then she let out another one of those stupid laughs.

***

There was not a single person around the fire who hadn’t noticed the way Jess had slowly been angling herself towards Emily since the drunk friend with an annoying laugh had been brought up. There was _also_ not a single person around the fire who hadn’t noticed the way her lips had pursed and her eyes had narrowed.

There was _also_ also not a single person around the fire who valued their life so little that they’d bring any of that up, no matter _how_ easy it would be to crack a joke.

“Annoying laugh, huh?” If she’d tilted her head to the side anymore than she already had, it likely would’ve snapped clean off her shoulders.

Feigning confusion, Emily blinked in her direction a couple times before opening her mouth in a pantomime of a gasp. “Oh nooo…did you think I was talking about _you?_ Oh my God, how embarrassing…no, see, don’t you remember? We said right at the beginning that _none_ of these stories were about _us!_ So you must just be confused.”

Jess’s eyes narrowed further.

“Yeah, see? You’re just confused. I can talk slower if you think it’ll help?” Two quick pats to her arm (an arm Jess _very_ abruptly pulled away), a smile, and then Emily was back into her story as though the interruption had never happened.

***

“You’re such a…look, fine, if you don’t want to admit you were outside Luke’s house this morning, then whatever, but I thought you were at least grown-up enough to like, _respond_ when someone shouts your name at you.” She got quiet for another second, then added, “I could’ve given you a ride, y’know. It would’ve saved you the walk of shame.”

And okay, now I wasn’t sure whether she was drunk or high or _both_ , because none of that shit added up. For one, Luke was my _ex_ , and other than a few totally insignificant Twitter DMs that were _unbelievably_ cringe-worthy—on _his_ part, obviously—the two of us hadn’t spoken for weeks. Plus, um…I was nowhere _near_ his and his friends’ grubby frat house. She sounded way too confident when she’d brought that up, though, so I did actually take a break from fixing my eyeliner, turning my head to look out the window just to, like…double-check that _I_ wasn’t the crazy one.

“Uh…I don’t know who you think you saw over there,” I said, turning away from the window and back to the mirror, not really needing to move since they were right next to each other, “…but it _def_ wasn’t me. Have you considered changing your contact lenses, maybe? Or _not_ getting completely blackout drunk before lunchtime?” Then something occurred to me. “And hey, why, exactly, were _you_ out by Luke’s this morning?”

Surprise, she only responded to _part_ of what I’d said, and oh, you’ll never guess _which_ part. “I’m not drunk! Jesus! Look, if that wasn’t you I saw, then you have some kind of _Parent Trap_ thing going on, because whoever she was, she looked _exactly_ like you. _Exactly_.”

“Uh huh.” By then I was less sure she was fucked up and almost positive that she was trying to pull some kind of bizarre prank on me. Probably in on it with one of Luke’s stupid frat brothers. They were always doing stupid shit like that, thinking it was cute or something. “Pretty sure I’d know if I had a twin walking around, so like…try again.”

The whole call was odd, but not enough to freak me out or anything. There were _lots_ of people on campus—we were one of the largest schools in the country—so the chances of her having seen someone with my body type and hair color? Not unheard of. Also, just saying, Luke had been _pretty_ broken up when I dumped his ass, so would it surprise me to find out he was hooking up with someone who looked _uncomfortably_ similar to me? No. No it would not.

After hanging up, I got my stuff together and headed for my favorite coffee spot to get some work done. I was positively _salivating_ by the time I got close enough to smell the coffee brewing inside, but the second I stepped into the shop, I heard someone from the front counter start yelling.  
  
“Hey! Nope, no, you get out of here!”

I looked up and saw one of the usual baristas angrily scrubbing at his shirt with a wad of napkins. Whatever color that shirt had been when he’d gotten to work was anyone’s guess…because that thing was an ugly, spotty, tie-dyed brown now. After a second, I realized…uh…he was yelling _at me?_

“Excuse me?” I asked, trying _not_ to notice the way everyone else in the shop had turned to stare at me, more than one or two of them whispering to their friends.

But the barista just shook his head. When he did that, I saw a huge angry red patch on the side of his neck that wasn’t normally there. To me, it almost looked like he’d been burnt.

“You get the _fuck_ out of here!” he snapped, and _that_ surprised me for sure. I was already writing a scathing Yelp review in my head, but what he said after that stopped me cold. “If you don’t get out of here _now_ , I swear to God I’ll get the cops on your ass.”

Now I don’t care who you are or what kind of life you live—if someone says they’re calling the police on you, um, you don’t stick around to see if they’re bluffing. Especially not when you have a very nice scholarship that your very nice university could rescind whenever they wanted.

I turned around and left, simple as that. I was so shaken up that I knew I wouldn’t be getting any work done today. Period. I felt dizzy…my bag felt heavier than it had been when I’d left for the day…it was like I was totally off-center, and couldn’t find my balance.

I had been hurrying away from the coffee shop when someone grabbed my arm, and when I turned around, I saw one of my sorority sisters there, just like…staring at me. Open-mouthed. She was acting as though I’d sprouted a third leg from the middle of my chest or something.

“What…was… _that_ about?” she asked me, her eyes so wide that I could see myself in them.

More because I was agitated than anything else, I yanked my arm out of her grip. “I don’t know! He just freaked out on me and said he’d call the—”

“Freaked out on _you?_ Oh no, nonono, I meant what the fuck made you think it was a good idea to throw a _scorching hot latte_ onto another human being? Are you kidding me? What was the fucking thought process there?”

I…to be honest, I kind of felt like she’d punched me. She hadn’t, obviously, but my ears rang like she had. “Throw a…what?” I moved away from her again, taking a couple steps back. “What are you talking about?!” I asked, “I _just_ got here!”

“Nooo,” she said, and I realized then what the look on her face was—fear. She was _scared_ of me. That was…new. And not especially pleasant. “I was sitting in there minding my own business, and then your skinny ass strolls in like you own the place, the guy makes you your usual, you take one sip and then you fucking _throw_ it at him. You _threw_ it at him! Right in his _face_ , what the fuck!”

All I could do was blink. “I didn’t throw anything!”

“I _saw_ you!” she said, and then she shook her head. “Look, I don’t know if you’re like, having a nervous breakdown or something after the whole Luke fiasco, but this? This isn’t cute. You’re lucky he let you walk out of there instead of calling the cops on the spot! What the fuck is _wrong_ with you? Why would you even come back here after that?”

 _I wouldn’t_ , I thought quietly, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I was just…confused. Between this and the call from earlier, I…I didn’t know _what_ to think. But I definitely wasn’t thrilled about it.

*******

“Y’know, Em…not for nothing, but as a twin, I’m finding it hard to be too scared by this premise you’re giving us. ‘I saw someone who looked just like you do something earlier’ doesn’t really pack the same punch when you already sort of…” Beth leaned over and pressed her cheek flush against Hannah’s, waving her hand around both of their faces, “Share most facial features with someone else for real.”

Her earlier drink finally doing its job, Hannah found it in herself to raise her voice and jerk out of her sister’s reach. “Um, speak for yourself,” she said, feeling her face flush as people laughed. Strangely enough, though, she wasn’t embarrassed! It must’ve been the fire or the alcohol making her hot, and oh, what a change that was! “I get a call from someone who saw _you_ doing something dumb but they think it was _me?_ Cue the biggest panic attack of my _life!_ ” There was another ripple of laughter at that, and she beamed, basking in the feel of it.

“Oh please! You should _hope_ to get confused for me someday! People might actually think you have a life outside of winning all those shiny trophies…”

“Y’know, I’m pretty sure it’s _my turn_ right now, so how about we keep the cute twin-talk to a minimum, hmm?” Emily drawled, secretly thankful for the interruption; she hadn’t expected how thirsty that much talking would make her when she was stuck choking down smoke from the fire. “We get it, it’s like, crazy precious that you’re two peas in a pod or whatever, but try to hold it in until we reach the question and answer segment, okay?”

“Maybe if you don’t want comments about life as a twin, you shouldn’t be telling a story called ‘The Girl With My Face,” Ashley said under her breath, angled in such a way that only Chris and Josh could hear her. She wasn’t about to run the risk of losing whatever shred of respect she’d earned from Emily that night—no she was _not_.

“Um, save it for the Q&A, maybe?” Josh muttered back to her with an eerily spot-on valley girl vocal fry, making their little group of three giggle like grade schoolers.

***

After that, I went back home. I didn’t want to, not really, especially not since it was a Thursday and I usually go bar-hopping with my friends on Thursday nights…but I was just so rattled, you know? Seriously weirded out.

 _I_ knew I wasn’t having some kind of breakdown—trust me, I was nowhere _near_ upset about breaking up with Luke, and finals were still forever away, so what was there to worry about? I wasn’t stressed or tired or any of that crap...but I was confused. End of story.

I decided I was just gonna shut myself up for the rest of the day and see if all of this madness passed. I checked if maybe there was going to be a full moon that night, or if Mercury was in retrograde, whatever that meant, but the answer was no to both.

It was weird. That was the problem, it was just so _weird_. None of it made any sense! I was a _junior_ , so I’d been on campus for three years already. In that time, no one—not a single solitary person—had ever said a word to me about seeing someone who looked anything like me. And trust me. People around here were well aware of who I was and what I looked like, okay? I was in Greek life, I belonged to _four_ different scholastic and recreational clubs, I was one of the people who showed freshmen around campus during orientation week, and the cherry on top, I was on the Dean’s List _every_ semester, and our school _always_ put up photos of the top 1% in the library’s main study area, so…yeah. I would’ve known. _Someone_ would’ve said something.

I worried about that bullshit for a while, and then, when I really, really admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to get anything done, I got into bed, turned Netflix on, and eventually ended up taking a long, much-needed nap.

When I woke up, it was to the sound of my phone dinging with new notifications. I stared at them for a second, the words blurry and not totally making sense. I blinked hard a couple times to really wake myself up, and saw that another one of my friends had texted me. Not the day drinking bimbo, that’s an important note—a much less annoying, much more put-together friend.

***

Jess sucked her lower lip into her mouth and bit into it hard enough to scrape away almost all of her long-wear lip-gloss.

Wordlessly, Matt and Mike met each other’s eyes across the fire, and both subtly scooted themselves a couple inches away from the two of them. Just in case. This wasn’t their first rodeo when it came to Emily and Jess, after all.

Hoping against hope that the girls were too distracted by…whatever it was bubbling just under the surface between them, Matt covertly lifted his drink up to the right side of his mouth as a sort of blocker, mouthing to Mike, ‘What’re they fighting about _now?_ ’

In response he just shrugged, widening his eyes comically as he mouthed back, ‘The _fuck_ should I know?!’

And while neither Jess nor Emily seemed to notice this, everyone else around the fire certainly did. A fair number of eyes were rolled and more than one person dropped their head into their hands. On the other side of the fire, in especially hushed voices, Josh began putting down odds on which one of them would throw the first punch.

Chris put five dollars on Emily.

Sam shook her head in disappointment.

After a moment of contemplation, Beth put _her_ money on Jess.

***

“Hey,” her message said, “Where’d you go?” And then, sent a few seconds later, “I got you your drink!”

I couldn’t help but make a little ‘aww’ sound, because that was so sweet! She’d figured I’d be hitting the bars with them that night, so she’d gone ahead and gotten me my usual drink! That kinda shit never failed to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

“OMG you’re such a sweetie!” I texted back. “But I’m not coming out tonight, frowny face, I’m not really feeling up to it, long story.” And then, when I thought of it, I added, “I’ll Venmo you for the drink, though! You enjoy it!”

I went to set my phone down to I could grab some water from my kitchenette, but she answered me _instantly_. At first, the only thing she sent was a whole mess of question marks and nothing else. That made me laugh—she was probably already a few steps past tipsy and disappointed that I wouldn’t be there to dance with her. Except…then she texted me again and I felt my heart sink.

“What do you mean?” she texted. “You were JUST at the table with us? Are you NOT in the bathroom?”

I don’t know how long I sat there in bed, staring at that message. I really don’t. When I felt like I could move again, I did the first thing that popped into my head: I snapped a selfie showing that I was in my room and sent it to her.

I watched the little word bubble with an ellipsis appear in the text, telling me she was typing. Then it disappeared. I waited, and I waited…and after two whole minutes, she finally sent me another string of messages.

“Ha ha ha,” the first text read. Then, “How did you do that?”

“Do WHAT?” I asked, both out loud _and_ in my message.

“Did you climb out the window or something lol?” she sent back. “I just checked the bathroom…how did you get home that fast?”

I was trying so hard not to totally flip out on her. Chances were good she _was_ drunk, I reminded myself, so maybe she’d mixed me up with someone else from our group. If all the girls were there, then no doubt one of the two from earlier had mentioned something about the weirdness that had happened today…either the thing outside of Luke’s place or whatever that had been at the coffee shop.

“I was never AT the bar,” I typed. “I’ve been home ALL NIGHT.”

That time I didn’t have to wait. She sent me a shitton of question marks again. And then…then she sent me a photo.

It was blurry and dark in the way _all_ group photos taken by drunk people usually turn out, but I could see everyone just fine. The two friends I’d talked to earlier weren’t actually there, so that part of my theory flew out the window, but I barely even noticed that. There was only one thing I _could_ notice.

Just right of center, not exactly in the middle of the group but awfully close, was…

 _Me_.

It was…me. There was no mistaking it, no pretending it _wasn’t_ …it was stone-cold fact. There I was. Smiling into the camera. Wearing an outfit I’d never, ever seen before. It was _not_ flattering.

I wanted to say something to that: ‘That’s not me!’ maybe, or ‘Who the FUCK is THAT?!’ but there was no point. There was no question about who the person in the photo was. It wasn’t me, but it was. …or maybe I should say it was me, but it wasn’t. Either way, I couldn’t reply. I’d been trying to keep it together since that morning and now I just _couldn’t_. I felt like such a baby, but before I realized what I was doing, I’d called my mom.

She only had enough time to answer with her usual “Hiii honeyyy!” before the dam broke.

“I’m an only child, right?” I asked her, and even though I couldn’t remember even feeling a prickle, I noticed I was _sobbing_. “You’d tell me if I had a twin, right, Mom? Right? You would, wouldn’t you?!”

If I wasn’t crying so hard, I’m sure I would’ve realized my mom was just as confused and just as panicked as me. She tried to calm me down, tried to get me to explain, and after somewhere around five minutes of her shushing me, I was finally able to get it out. I explained the weird texts from that morning and what had happened when I went to get coffee, but when I got to the part about my friends taking the photo at the bar, I just totally lost it again.

“It’s me, Mom!” I sobbed, “It looks _just like me_ , but I’ve been home _all night!_ ” Part of me wanted to forward her the picture…ugh, but that would mean looking at it again, and I couldn’t do that. Could not.

My mom kept trying to calm me down, reassuring me that no, _no_ , I didn’t have any secret siblings, much less a secret identical twin, and then her voice went muffled like she’d tried to cover the receiver of an old landline despite the fact she was using a smartphone. “I don’t know…” I heard her say, clearly aimed at someone other than me. “She keeps talking about her friends seeing someone who looks like her…”

Then there was a rustling sound as the phone was handed off to someone else. A second later, a new voice spoke to me.

“What’s all this about?” my grandmother asked. When I told her exactly what I’d told my mom before, she got very, very quiet. Then she asked me, “Have _you_ seen this person yourself?” I said no, even though I thought I must’ve been _real_ close to bumping into her during the situation at the coffee shop, and when I said that, she sighed in relief. “Good, good…” she said, “That, my dear, sounds like a doppelganger, and if that’s the case, you do _not_ want to be anywhere near it.”

I could hear my mom groan in the background, and normally I would’ve joined in, because, see…Grandma was unbelievably superstitious, and she had a habit of going off on these long tangents if you made the mistake of bringing any of it up. She really, _really_ liked watching those crappy tv shows about psychics and stuff like that. People channeling loved ones using like, Etch-a-Sketches and stuff, I don’t know. Normally I’d roll my eyes, but that night…I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“A doppelganger?” I asked. “What does that mean? I thought that word was just—”

“It’s a spirit,” Grandma said, and then she turned away from the phone, probably to scold my mom for being dismissive. “It’s a spirit that takes on the appearance of a living person and brings nothing but _misery_ and _suffering_ into their life.”

“You’re only going to scare her _more!_ ” I heard my mom say, but Grandma began talking over her.

“This is so important, now. Whatever reason this spirit has to be walking around with your face, it _will_ pass. It will! They’re weak spirits, you see, and they can only walk the earth for so long before they disappear. What you need to do is stay safe and stay _inside_. And whatever you do, you cannot look at it…and you _certainly_ cannot be in the same room with it.”

The sound of the phone being grabbed could be heard, as well as my mom’s voice, saying, “All right, that’s enough of that…”

“Wait!” I said, clutching my own phone to my face. “Why? Why can’t I look at it or be near it? What happens?”

“Honey—” my mom started, but Grandma took the phone again.

“They want to _be_ you,” she said, her voice a warning whisper. “They cannot be their own person or live their own life while _you_ still live, so if your doppelganger sees you…if it _finds_ you…it will do whatever it takes to claim your life as its own.” She paused then, sounding not frightened, but very worried. “There can only be one of _you_. Only one person can wear your face.”

***

“Again, as a twin? Gonna go ahead and call that piece of grandmotherly wisdom into question.”

“Oh, I’m sorry—did I somehow miss the part where we decided it was your turn to go?” Emily waited for only a moment, raising her eyebrows as she met Beth’s gaze, her mouth turned up into a saccharine smile. “No? No we didn’t? Oh thank God! I was about to be _sooo_ embarrassed.”

With a roll of her eyes (and a raising of her middle finger), Beth mimed zipping her lips, thereby allowing Emily to continue.

***

Obviously my mom wasn’t happy with how that had unfolded—she _insisted_ that she’d come pick me up tomorrow and take me home, at least for the weekend, but maybe for the following week as well, as long as I wasn’t going to miss any important exams. Grandma was pretty insistent on that plan too, though for…let’s say _different_ reasons.

I wasn’t totally sure whether or not I believed what my grandma had said about doppelgangers, but then I made the brilliant decision to look them up online, and suddenly, whether or not I _believed_ didn’t matter. I was fucking terrified regardless.

Going around my place, I made a point of covering all the mirrors and super shiny surfaces. After everything Grandma had said, I was sure that I’d have a full-on heart attack if I accidentally saw my own reflection. And if I’m being honest, doing that stupid little thing made me feel safer, somehow.

I’d finished covering the mirror I’d used that morning to dig the eyelash out of my eye when my phone went off…and immediately I felt like I was going to throw up. Whoever it was, I thought I had a pretty good idea what they were going to want to talk about…and I wasn’t looking forward to it.

I’d barely said hello when Luke’s voice cut in. It was almost a shock to hear him like that after so long, and to hear him sounding so _angry_ , to boot. “Okay, the _fuck_ is your problem?” he asked, and God, he hadn’t even sounded that upset when I’d dumped him.

“Hi. Look. I…” But then I stopped. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to handle whatever came next. I glanced at the mirror, a nervous habit, and all I saw was the blouse I’d used to cover it, a slight breeze from the open window beside it ruffling the fabric a bit. “I know how this is gonna sound, Luke, but whatever happened, it wasn’t me.”

He laughed and I winced. “Wasn’t you,” he repeated. “Okay, so you’re telling me I _didn’t_ just see you KEY MY FUCKING CAR?!” My wince became a grimace as he raged on, and I only half-heard the things he was saying—things about me being jealous of him moving on, how much it would cost to get his beloved car touched up, how all of his friends were laughing at him for being the guy whose ex had gone full _Before He Cheats_ on him…

So I did something I’d never done before, not even when our fighting had gotten really bad: I hung up on him. Then I turned my phone on silent and put it under my pillow just in case.

I locked my bedroom door, turned the lights off, and I cried. I cried and cried and cried.

The thought of doppelgangers being real? Of them being vengeful spirits hell-bent on ruining people’s lives before trying to take them for themselves? That was terrifying in its own right. But somehow almost as bad as that was the idea that…that these horrible things were happening and my friends genuinely believed _I’d_ done them. Whoever this person or thing was, my friends _believed_ she was _me_. They saw her, talked to her, interacted with her in some way, and not _one_ of them even _suspected_ that she wasn’t me.

There was a beep from my laptop. I saw I had a Facebook notification. Then two. Three. Four. I shut my computer and curled up there in the dark. I couldn’t stop crying no matter how hard I tried…the thought of waking up tomorrow to see my phone, my social media, my email, all full of horrible stories and angry messages…it was killing me!

After that I must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, I was staring at my bedside clock as the numbers flipped from 3:15 to 3:16. I laid there for a second, trying to figure out why I’d woken up, but it hit me just as quickly. I was _parched_. I’d done a lot of crying, it only made sense that I’d be dehydrated.

So I got up and got myself a glass of water from the kitchenette, and as I headed down the hallway towards my bedroom, I was honestly surprised at how much better I felt. I’d be going home to stay with my mom and grandma first thing in the morning, and whatever had happened with my friends…well, hopefully I’d figure out a way to explain or make it up to them. I could even help Luke pay for his paint job! Maybe I had _needed_ to cry it out, to find that catharsis…

Then I stepped into my room and saw my own face staring back at me.

I _screamed_ and dropped my glass, water going _everywhere_ …and then I groaned, every muscle going weak with relief when I realized what I’d seen. Ugh. It had just been my stupid mirror. Jesus Christ, what an idiot I was!

I tossed a sleep shirt from my laundry basket onto the puddle of water, too tired to deal with it right then and there, and got back into bed, burying my face in my pillow.

I had almost fallen asleep when my eyes shot open and my heart leapt into my throat.

I’d covered the mirror before going to bed.

But I’d left the window open.

***

Sitting back with a flourish, Emily crossed one leg over the other and held her hands primly out to her sides as she waited for everyone’s reactions.

Clearly still hell-bent on deflating her personal bubble, Beth leaned forward and slowly shook her head. “See, if you’d ended it with ‘And then she accidentally lost _my_ fake ID instead of _her_ fake ID…maybe you’d have me shaking in my boots over here, but—”

“Wait.” A crease of brotherly concern furrowed Josh’s forehead as he turned towards the twins. “Do you little freaks have _fake IDs?_ ”

“Uh.”

“That’s…really not the issue at hand here, I don’t think.”

He raised his eyebrows and, in perfect unison, both of the twins said, “Please don’t tell Mom.”

“That was seriously spooky, Em!” Matt hadn’t exactly slid any closer to her or Jess since the story had begun, and in fact was edging awfully close to sitting in Ashley’s lap by that point, but still he gave her a genuine grin as he tipped his beer towards her. “Like, the thought of something that can _perfectly_ imitate you? Yikes.”

“Um, a something that can perfectly imitate you _and_ make your friends _believe_ that it’s really you?” Ashley added with a shudder. “Seriously, _seriously_ creepy. The second you brought up the mirror being next to the window in the beginning, I was like—”

“I liked Mike’s story better,” Jess said flatly, and that was when _everyone_ knew they were reaching critical mass. Hell, even _Mike_ raised his eyebrows at that, his eyes flicking cartoonishly from one side to the other as though to ask everyone else around the fire ‘You guys hearing this? You seeing this?’ She seemed fairly serious about it, though. “It’s gonna be a solid ‘no’ from me on this one, I think.” Turning to her right, she flashed Emily a mocking smile, her nose and eyes crinkling up with the effort of it, “Sorry about that.”

“Hey, there’s no accounting for taste. You’ve _definitely_ proven that to me time and time again.”

Before things could devolve any further than they already had, Sam leapt into the fray as she always did, taking it upon herself to defuse the situation. She clapped her hands together once, the sound muffled by her gloves, and took over for Josh. “So!” she said as cheerfully as a human being could force themselves into being, startling more than a few of them into looking her way in the process, “Voting time! Jess said nay, okay, already got that, but…do we accept Emily’s story into the Midnight Society?”

Next to her, Josh pressed both of his hands over his heart, trading an esoteric look with Chris before turning to Sam again. “Have I been usurped?”

Sam didn’t even meet his eyes as she reached over to cover his mouth with her hand. “All those in favor?” she tried again.

One by one everyone’s hands went up, and the intensity of Emily’s self-satisfied smirk could only be matched by that of Jess’s pout. They were the perfect inverse of one another as they sat there on their bench, Jess with her arms folded and shoulders hunched, Emily sitting ramrod-straight with her chin tipped just so.

“Looks like you’re in! Congrats! I’m sure Josh’ll have one of those buttons and maybe even a pamphlet made for you before too…” Sam glanced his way with a look of absolute disbelief on her face. “Did you just try to _lick my hand?_ I’m wearing _gloves_ , you putz!”

“Wasn’t scary,” Jess muttered under her breath.

Unfortunately, she didn’t mutter it under her breath _enough_.

“Oh, I dunno,” Emily sighed, “I mean, I think it would be terrifying to wake up one day and realize there were two of _you_ walking around doing stupid shit for attention. Twitter might literally explode from the sheer volume of thirst traps sent out from your IP address…”

“ _Okay!_ ” Sam said as she yanked her hand back away from Josh. Her cheeriness had taken on a distinctly edged quality, as though she were trying to put out eleven separate fires while shepherding a group of sugar-high school kids away from the worst of the flames. Honestly, she didn’t think the comparison was that far off. “That was a great story, Em, very impressive, now _please_ , can we just…who wants to go next?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hour grows ever-later, and so another story is fed to the fire...
> 
> Ah, but we still have a ways to go ;)
> 
> (As always, I hope you guys are doing well and hanging in there! <3)


	12. Jess’s Story: The Tale of How I Moved On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant tags for this chapter: Insulting language (i.e., bitch), car accidents, threat of drowning

“Cool!” Jess said to no one in particular, speaking up and raising her voice so she was all but shouting. “I think we can agree _that_ was absolute garbage, and I’m super sure Emily _really_ appreciated all your pity votes, but hey, guess what? It’s my turn now.” Before anyone could react, she launched into it, her lips pulled into a tight, joyless smile the whole time.

***

It wasn’t my idea to take that road. Honestly, nothing about the drive had been _my_ idea. If you want to get into the dirty details, that was sort of the whole running theme of our “friendship:” Nothing was _ever_ my idea. Unless something got fucked, that is. If something bad happened, then like, _of course_ it was my idea! I was the dumb one, the ditz with a wad of bubblegum for a brain, so good ideas? Pfft, no, I _never_ had _good_ ideas! Only _she_ was allowed to have _good_ ideas!

Which was how we ended up taking that fucking detour. Life’s funny like that.

***

“Hey, uh, hello?”

“ _What?!_ ”

Josh didn’t react to Jess’s sharp bark of anger except to lean himself back an inch or two, the corners of his mouth subtly turning up into a sly smirk. “Abrasive. Intense. Domineering. I _like_ that in a woman. However!” He nodded down to the dwindling pile of pine needles on the ground, “I think, uhhh… _perhaps_ …an important step was skipped here…”

Frowning, her eyes flicked to where he was pointing before rolling with such intensity it was actually sort of impressive they didn’t pop right out of her head. “Fine! Whatever! Do the thingy!”

He nodded somberly and grabbed a handful of pine needles. “For you, Goldilocks? I will do the thingy. But first, don’t you think you should be giving us the title of your magnum opus here?”

“My what?”

“Your _story_ , oh my _God_.” The wry amusement tempering Emily’s scorn was not lost on Jess. “I know two-syllable words aren’t your specialty, but—”

“Shut _up!_ Submitted for the whatever—”

“…approval of the Midnight Society,” a few voices murmured.

“—this is, I don’t know—”

“…the Tale of…”

“—the Tale of…How I Moved On. Sure. Fine. Now _please_ , just…do the thingy!”

A servant of the people if nothing else, Josh did, in fact, do the thingy.

***

I was mad, okay? Like really, _really_ mad. And I was trying not to say anything about it because we’d hit the point where the only thing on the radio was people talking about the Bible, so my options were to listen to that, sit and stew in my literal fucking rage, or actually say something and get into another stupid fight, so…I picked quiet. Sue me.

I was driving because of course I was, so I was totally stressed on top of being pissed. She’d _sworn_ the detour would be the fastest way for us to get home for spring break. Swore it. Up and down. When she saw all the traffic signs, she’d just instantly gone, oh we should go that way instead, and since _she_ was the one who had _good_ ideas and _I_ was the stupid one who had _bad_ ideas, we just took that route.

And surprise! The road it put us on was scary as all hell! It was narrow and twisty-turny, one lane going the opposite direction to our left, and a total fucking _cliff_ to the right. It was _terrifying!_ Every time a turn came up I had to bite my lip and slow way down like some kind of old lady. I was _miserable!_

But _she_ didn’t care. What a surprise. Nope! She just sat in the passenger seat, her stupid oversized sunglasses reflecting her phone screen, only looking up when I slowed down to take a turn so she could make some fucking noise at me.

Us driving home like this? Together? Also not my idea. After what she’d done last week, I hadn’t wanted to _think_ about her, much less spend hours and hours crammed in the same tiny car!

You have a problem? I asked after _another_ turn where she sucked her teeth at me.

Nope, she said, which meant she _did_ , and then she sniffed like she was bored and that just made me even madder. She was always doing shit like that, acting like she didn’t care. Like she was too _above everyone else_ to care.

We were _supposed_ to be friends. _Best_ friends. And when you’re best friends with someone, you like…you deal with certain things, right? Maybe they borrow your stuff like your favorite jacket without asking first. Fine. Or they like, expect you to pick up the check at lunch in front of the rest of your friends without warning you. Also fine! Maybe they make jokes about things you’re sensitive about in front of other people and then go, it’s just a joke! Lighten up! Whatever! Best friends forever!

Only here’s the thing: Sometimes lines get crossed that make it so you’re NOT best friends anymore. Sometimes people do shit that proves once and for all that _they_ don’t consider _you_ their best friend, and that they’re just going to keep fucking with you _forever_ because they think you’ll just lay there and _take it_.

And maybe I really _was_ an idiot, because ha! Guess what? I did. I just kept gritting my teeth and dealing with it. Because I thought that’s what friends do. But she’d _crossed_ one of those lines last week. She didn’t know that I knew she had, she didn’t _know_ that I’d found out, but I sure had!

My hands had been shaking all morning, I was so mad. I was mad because not _only_ was she still acting like everything was totally normal and totally fine and totally okay, but she’d _insisted_ on putting her bags in the backseat so I was stuck putting _mine_ in the trunk even though it was _my car_ , and then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she was wearing…you guessed it! Ding ding ding! My favorite jacket! The one she’d borrowed two weeks ago without asking! Like she was just the queen of the fucking castle.

Another turn came up so I slowed down as much as I could, and we just sort of inched around the curve. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do the first time someone was driving on the other side of the road either, like…it was bad enough with us being the only car. If someone was coming at me from head-on, I didn’t even want to think about it.

If you keep driving like that, we’ll be lucky to get home by _winter_ break, she said.

Oh, I’m sorry, _you_ wanna do it? I asked.

Couldn’t do any _worse_ , she said under her breath and that’s when I turned to look at her. What? she asked, and when I just looked at her for a second she said it again, louder. _What?_

I rolled my eyes and looked back at the road, doing my best to ignore her and the cliff as I kept driving. This wasn’t the time or the place I wanted to have this fight, but I knew it was coming. Oh. Believe me. It was coming. I’d been quiet and dealt with it for as long as I could, but if she kept making those noises and insulting my driving and _wearing my fucking jacket_ , I was going to blow up.

You’re being so weird, she said, Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Would you just let me drive? I asked. I would kind of just like to drive, if that’s a-okay with you.

What would be okay with me is if you’d learn the difference between the gas and the brake, she said, and then she laughed like it was the funniest fucking thing she’d ever heard someone say, and that’s when I felt everything threaten to explode for _real_.

Know what would be okay with _me?_ I asked, What would be okay with _me_ is if maybe _you’d_ fucking _apologize!_

Then she was like, Apologize for what? And if I wasn’t so scared of taking my hands off the wheel I would’ve smacked her right across her face.

Apologize for what. Apologize _for what_. I had so hoped we’d be able to at least get home before this happened so we could have this fight over text like grown-ups, but nooo! Nope! Not with her! Never! Things could never go the way _I_ wanted. Things always had to be the most dramatic they could be so that she could keep acting like she was the star of her own goddamn reality tv show.

I didn’t say anything for a minute after that. I came real close to biting all the way through my lip and I thought my fingers might actually tear through my steering wheel from gripping it so tight, but neither of those things happened. Maybe they should’ve, and maybe that would’ve stopped it from happening. Maybe it would’ve made it happen _faster_ , I don’t know.

When I didn’t answer, oh, she couldn’t have that!

Apologize for _what?_ she repeated, and it was obvious she was fucking pissed now too. Join the club, right?

Nothing, I said, because I was the good, stupid friend whose job it was to sit by and be laughed at. Absolutely _nothing!_

No, I want to know what the hell crawled up your ass, she said.

What crawled up my ass, I said, is you! Why did I find out from fucking _Megan_ that there was a party at Jason’s last week? Why did I find out from fucking _Megan_ that _you_ were there, and _you_ went around telling people I was sick when they asked where I fucking was?

I’d been so mad about it for so long that I just sort of, I dunno, expected her to be as upset about it as I was. But shocker! She wasn’t. She sat there in the passenger seat just kind of looking at me for a second, then laughed again.

Oh my God, she said, looking back down at her phone. _That’s_ what this is about? Jesus. Chill. I was doing you a favor.

A _favor?!_ I asked, absolutely beside myself, How was that doing me a favor?!

I saved you a whole night of awkwardness and humiliation, duh, she said. Look, no one was going to say it, okay? But no one _wanted_ you at that party, but they definitely wanted _me_ there, so I thought I’d just save you the embarrassment of everyone ignoring you and not even tell you it was happening. Really, it was like…think of it as an act of kindness.

Oooh, and _that_ was the last fucking straw.

You’re such a fucking _bitch!_ I said, turning to her again, and when she didn’t look away from her phone I reached over and took it out of her hands, throwing it as hard as I could into the backseat. I don’t know if it broke, but I hope it did. I really, _really_ hope it did.

Hey! she shouted, reaching for her phone before I threw it. Then she slapped my arm as hard as _she_ could and I grabbed her wrist, not sure whether I wanted to just get her to stop hitting me or if I was going to tear her whole fucking arm out of its socket so I could beat her over the head with it, but _one_ of those two things was going to happen!

Except that’s when I heard someone laying on their horn, and when I turned back to the road, I saw that the car had drifted into the left lane and there was someone coming right at us from the other direction. I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands again and tried to straighten us out, but she was still smacking me like she hadn’t fucking noticed we were about to get in a head-on collision, so my arm slipped and pulled and I overcorrected, jerking us to the right hard enough for the tires to squeal.

There was an awful rollercoaster feeling for a second where everything sort of wiggled to one side and the weight of the car sort of…moved. Then the bumps of the road smoothed out so it felt like driving on glass and I felt my seatbelt get really, really tight against my one shoulder, and then…

Then we were falling.

I remember being really dizzy, then hitting my head on something hard…and then the next thing I knew, my ankles were wet.

I heard a bunch of weird noises, but for a few seconds my head hurt too bad to make any kind of sense of them. I blinked a few times and looked down at my ankles, scared that maybe I was bleeding or that, Jesus, maybe I’d peed myself after slamming my head like that, but all I saw down in the footwell was water. That didn’t make sense…until I looked up and saw the trickles running down the windows and raining down from my shitty old sunroof.

Don’t just fucking _sit there!_ I heard her say, and that’s when I sort of started to wake up.

My head was _pounding_ and it was super hard to think, but I looked around and saw that all of the bags that had been in the backseat had burst open, clothes going just everywhere, and there was blood down one side of her face and smeared on her window, and then when I looked at myself in the rearview mirror, I saw I was bleeding too, from a nasty split in my lip.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, she kept saying, and that only made it harder for me to think, but I managed to get my seatbelt off and pull my seat back. What the fuck is your _problem?!_ she shouted, Why would you _do that?!_ Were you _trying_ to kill us?! Because that’s what you did! You just fucking _killed us!_

It was still too hard for me to talk, especially with my lip hurting as bad as it did, so instead I tried to figure out what was happening. I looked out the window and what I saw didn’t really make sense…it was like we were in a pool, or…

Then it hit me. We’d gone off the road. We’d spun out over that fucking cliff.

I’d never been down that road before so I didn’t know where we were _now_ , if it was a lake or a pond or the fucking _ocean_ , but we were sinking farther and farther down, and the water running into the car was only getting higher. I felt it rise up past my ankles and to my calves, soaking my jeans and making them so much heavier than they should’ve been.

Okay…I said slowly, Okay, we’re going to have to like…work together to get out of—

 _Fuck_ working together, and _fuck_ you, you psychopath! she said, and then went back to struggling around in her seat.

It felt like a bad dream. Like…some impossible thing you have nightmares about when you’re a kid, but never actually _really_ happens to people. I sat there staring at the water as it began to flood the car, even reached out and touched it, and yeah, it was super cold and super real. That helped wake me up even a little more, and thank God for that because a second later I really needed it.

I knew what the noise was the second I heard it, but I couldn’t make my mouth move fast enough to tell her to stop.

This bitch had fucking _lowered the window_.

But _I_ was the one who had stupid ideas?! _I_ was the dumb friend?! _Me?!_

She’d gotten her seatbelt off too, it looked like, and she’d rolled the window down as much as she could before the water just started _pouring_ in. I tried to slam my hand on the controls to roll it back up before anymore could get in, but by then the pressure was too much and the window didn’t budge.

 _Why did you do that?!_ I yelled, breathing like I’d just run the mile in gym class. I’d never been too good at holding my breath and suddenly every image of near-drowning in swim class came back to me clear as day.

She didn’t answer me. Instead, she started trying to squeeze herself out through the window.

Already the water was up to my neck and only getting higher, and I couldn’t get a deep breath to stick. Would _you_ be able to?! I was scared—so fucking _terrified_ —because my car was sinking to the bottom of a fucking lake or something, I was running out of air, and now? Now this person who I’d put up with for so long, who was supposed to be _my friend_ , was _leaving me to drown_.

When I felt the water move up to my nose I forced myself up as close to the car’s roof as I could and pulled in a big, big breath, and then that was it. It was past my head. The car was totally and completely flooded.

I tried my window, but the water pressure was too much and I couldn’t get it to open. I thought about trying to get out of _her_ open window instead, but I didn’t think I’d be able to get out of the space she’d left because, not for nothing, my boobs are like, _considerably_ bigger than hers.

***

Hannah dropped her face into her hands.

“Oh Lord Jesus, help us in this, the hour of our greatest need,” Chris muttered through a grit jaw, only Ashley’s elbow in his ribs keeping him from laughing until he wept.

***

I think it was more that I was like, used to doing it than anything else, but I tried the door handle and it actually…opened. It was hard to push it all the way open because of all the water, but I was still able to _do_ it.

I’m not the world’s best swimmer or anything, but I managed to push myself out of the car and into the water, and I could see the surface above me, way farther than the surface of any pool I’d ever been in. That’s when I got scared again, scared that I was going to drown, that I wouldn’t make it to the surface…and still all I could think was that that bitch left me. She’d _left me!_ She’d told me to go fuck myself, unrolled her window, and swam away without even checking to see if I was able to get out.

Really, that sort of told me everything I needed to know about our friendship. The party had been one thing, volunteering me to drive her home without apologizing had been another…and leaving me to die? Yeah, that was in a league of its own.

I started to make my way towards the surface, swimming up to the sunlight…and my leg caught on something.

I was _twice_ as freaked then because I could already feel my lungs burning up and hurting and I knew I wouldn’t be able to pull myself free if I’d gotten tangled in something—but I wasn’t tangled in anything.

 _She_ was, though.

I could see it right away: The belt of the jacket— _my jacket!_ —had gotten wrapped around the side mirror somehow, and she was stuck. She held onto my shoe with one of her hands, the other tugging at the jacket belt, her eyes huge as her sunglasses floated away a few feet from her head.

I looked at her. I thought about every joke at my expense, every mean, bitchy comment in front of my crushes, every time I’d said I should be the bigger person and then forgave her when she hadn’t even apologized in the first place.

Then I kicked my leg as hard as I could, yanking myself out of her grip.

Free again, I swam towards the surface, the sun getting brighter and brighter every time I moved my arms, and before long I’d made it to the top to pull in a deep, deep breath. The sun was warm and the water was almost comfortable now that I wasn’t totally submerged.

I looked up towards the cliff we’d fallen from and saw blue and red lights flashing. I could hear sirens in the distance getting closer and closer. Maybe I still didn’t know where I was, but _someone_ would, and soon that same someone would be there to help me get home.

As I waited for them, treading water, I also waited for something else. I waited for her to burst up through the water beside me, gasping and screaming. Maybe she’d hit me again, maybe she’d call me a bitch, maybe she’d even grab me and try to hold me under. But maybe she wouldn’t surface at all. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to get herself free. Maybe she’d learn the hard way that for someone who _only_ had good ideas, taking my jacket and repeatedly fucking with me had been a couple of real doozies.

Either way, I thought I’d be okay. If _I’d_ learned anything today, it was that the time had come for me to move on. Whatever that meant.

***

“So you’d let me drown,” Emily deadpanned, speaking up almost before Jess had finished forming the final word of her story. “Really. You’d let me drown.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you confused? _These stories aren’t about us_ ,” Jess replied, meeting Emily’s stare with a quirked eyebrow and her mouth pursed into a wicked little smile. “So you must’ve like, _missed something_.”

She blinked once. “I make you a dumb bimbo in the first _third_ of my story, so you make me drown in yours. Seriously. You let me drown, though. You get how those two things are _wildly_ different. You’re a fucking sociopa—”

“Whuh-oh!” Artfully angling himself just a bit further away from the girls (and nearly sitting on top of Hannah in the process), Mike flared his fingers, “Oookay, and now we’ve reached the point of the night where the sexual tension becomes too much and so we resort to petty catfighting instead.”

“Um, ex _cuse_ me?”

“Mature, Mike. Real mature. Maybe stay out of things that aren’t about you.”

He pulled a face, moving his hands into a more familiar gesture, palms out and fingers spread. “Look, ladies, we were all thinking it. You guys have been…” instead of using his words, he used his hands as puppets, pointing them towards each other as he made their mouths flap back and forth, “… _allllll night_ , so maybe—and this is just me spitballing here— _maybe_ you guys should just bang to get it over with, y’know? Break the tension. Move past it. Above and beyond.” His grin only widened when they both zeroed their gazes in on him. “Like adults!”

“Wow. I’m so glad you feel this is an open and welcoming environment to be a fucking _pig_ in.”

“Hey,” his hands moved again, that time assuming the shoulder-height, fingers-spread universal sign for ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’ “I’m just saying what everyone here’s thinking, that’s all.”

Fixing him with a glare that, quite frankly, seemed icy enough to extinguish the fire had she looked at it instead, Emily sneered, “No one was thinking that, _Michael_.”

“Oh no?” Appearing perfectly unaffected by her wrath, Mike turned his attention towards everyone else and threw his arms open wide. “Friends! Countrymen! We’re nothing if not a democracy—so hey, show of hands, during the course of tonight, who among us has found themselves thinking at one point or another, ‘Hey! Em and Jess should just fuck and get it over with!’ or something similarly along those lines?”

“You’re such a—” the two of them began in unison…only to fall silent just as quickly as, one by one, hands started going up.

Josh and Beth’s hands were the first to join Mike’s, shooting into the air with the utmost certainty. Then came Sam and Matt’s, not raised _quite_ as high or obnoxiously as the others’, but raised all the same. Then, slowly, hesitantly, Hannah’s joined the rest, only raised to eye-level, fingers curled tepidly in towards her palm. The only ones who _hadn’t_ raised their hands were Chris and Ashley, and as they got an eyeful of everyone else’s votes, something like shock dawned on both their faces.

“I, um…I mean, for what it’s worth, I…definitely wasn’t thinking anything like that,” Ashley said, her eyes flicking anxiously from Jess to Emily and back again.

“Yeah, okay, but like…do you two even know what sex _entails?_ ” Mike asked, eyebrows high as he swiveled himself towards her and Chris.

“No,” Josh answered for them, much to their obvious displeasure, “No they do not.”

As the three of them collapsed into their own argument, Mike turned back to Emily with a cavalier shrug and a shit-eating grin. “Looks like the people have spoken, so…”

“The _people?_ I’ll show you the _peo_ —”

“Before Jess finishes manufacturing what I’m sure is a quality comeback…” Beth stood and jammed her hands into her pockets. “I’ve had to pee since the second act of The Somnambulist’s Tale—”

“The _Tale of_ the Somnambulist!”

“It’s just The Somnambulist!”

“—so I’m gonna go run to the lodge and take care of business, if you get my meaning.” Completely ignoring Josh and Ashley’s interruptions, she began skirting her way out of the circle and towards the path. “Any other takers?”

Emily was up not even a second later, flipping her hair over her shoulder with a flourish as she turned her back on Mike to join Beth. “Know what? Yeah. Yeah, I think getting away from these idiots is just what the doctor ord—”

“Oooh no you don’t!” Scrambling over the bench with purpose enough to make both Matt _and_ Ashley scoot away, Jess got to her feet as well. “Like _hell_ am I letting you two go alone! You think you’re sooo slick…the _second_ you get in there it’ll be all ‘Oh my God, Jess is such a bitch’ this and ‘Can you believe her’ that and nuh-uh! Nooo way!”

“Wow. Paranoia’s _so_ not cute on you.”

“Shut _up!_ Or oh, I’m sorry, _I’m_ the one who should probably shut up, huh? Since my voice and laugh are like, _sooo_ annoying!”

“Actually? Yeah. That’d be ideal. Thanks for understanding.”

“ _UGH!_ ”

Realizing the grave she’d dug herself, Beth groaned aloud, her breath sending a plume of fog up into the air as her head lolled back on her shoulders, her loose beanie threatening to slide off into the snow. “All I wanted…” she said, her voice full of the deepest regret known to humankind, “…was to pee. Is that really so much to ask?”

“Unfortunately. I mean…in _this_ group, anyway.” For reasons she couldn’t quite place, Matt’s statement sounded very much like an apology.

“Hey, y’know, we…kinda need to vote on—” Again, Josh found himself silenced by Sam’s hand over his mouth. He glanced her way and, upon seeing the look on her face, raised both of his hands defensively and pantomimed locking up his lips and throwing away the key. Miracle of miracles, it must’ve been one hell of an invisible padlock, because he actually _stayed_ quiet once she pulled her hand away.

Beth sighed again and did her very best to ignore the chattering of the others as she fixed her hat and followed after Emily and Jess, all the while muttering to herself under her breath. “Let it go…let them just…get it out of their systems so we can enjoy the rest of the night in some kind of relative peace…” she murmured, gritting her jaw against the wind as she walked towards the lodge. “Let it go…and if they don’t stop, look on the bright side…this is _your_ mountain, so you know all the best cliffs you could lure them to and push them off of…and you’re really, _really_ good at fake crying, so no one would ever believe you did anything wrong.” And, grim as it was, the thought successfully brought a small, gentle smile to her lips.

…at least until she got close enough to hear their argument again (“By the way? No one _did_ want you at that party, so…” “You’re _such_ a bitch. You’re just _such_ a mega fucking _bitch!_ ”) and she lost her very last shred of faith in humanity.

She should’ve just peed in the woods. Like…what was the _worst_ that could’ve happened?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe the REAL horror is all the secondhand embarrassment we found along the way! Who's to say.
> 
> Oooh we're starting to wind down here, folks...it's anyone's guess what's coming next ;P


	13. Interruption #4: Jumping at Shadows

Whether you called it a twin thing or _The_ Twin-Thing, Beth knew without really _knowing_ that Hannah had had much the same internal monologue as the one she was having just then—the one about the third floor’s swanky master bathroom and how obsessed with it all of their friends were.

When she’d gotten out of one of the many, many, many _other_ bathrooms, there had been no sign of Emily or Jess…or so she’d thought, until she’d strained her ears. Beth rolled her eyes and, fingers flexing from the cold, decided to _do_ something while those two continued to argue or apologize or, hell, maybe make out per Mike’s suggestion. Who even _knew_ what they were getting up to? Not her, that was for damn sure. They were her friends and she loved them both dearly, but Jesus Christ Almighty, trying to figure out the ins and outs of _that_ dynamic was a job better suited to someone with three degrees in psychology and a couple more in sociology. And maybe like…a deeply rooted masochistic streak.

None of which applied to her.

Navigating the lodge was easy as pie even in the dark. She knew the place about as well as their real house, after all, so getting down into the basement took all of ten seconds. The narrow beam of her phone’s light got her down the stairs, and then voilà! There it was!

She flipped the main breaker and glanced upwards out of instinct as the lodge’s power grid thrummed awake in response. A moment later she could her the heating system kick on (probably startling the everloving daylights out of The Jessica and Emily Show in the process).

“And thus _one of us_ proves we have a brain…” she said to herself with something of a laugh, considering the looming bulk of the water heater for a second before deciding against it. The water heater was sort of a two-person job, and while everyone would no doubt be clamoring for warm showers in the morning, the mere thought of trying to convince either of the girls upstairs to stop arguing over whose story had been more offensive and instead join her down there with all the cobwebs and mold? Yeah, that made her itch.

As she made her way back up the stairs and into the great room, it was impossible _not_ to notice the stale, powdery smell of the air—it was obvious at once that they hadn’t run the heat since last winter, and _ugh_ , oh she hoped the worst of it would pass by the time they finished their stupid game of ghost story telephone and hunkered down inside for the night.

“ _There_ you are!” Emily hurried down the stairs from the third floor, making a point to give Jess (who was sitting on the lowest step) a wide berth. “Couldn’t warn us you were going to disappear like that? Rude.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you were real worried. I can tell you went all out trying to pull together a search party.”

Leaning against the railing and stretching her legs out on the riser once Emily had passed, Jess shrugged. “I checked the kitchen.”

“Be still my heart. You _do_ care!” Beth shook her hands out before blowing into them, not exactly reassured by the way her breath still fogged the air. “Fuck, how in the hell are we supposed to sleep like this tonight?” she grumbled, “As always, my dear brother’s priorities astound and amaze me…”

“ _Hannah_ sure didn’t do anything either,” Emily pointed out, her own hands buried deep in the pockets of her (woefully thin) jacket.

“Too busy getting scared by _raccoons_ …” came Jess’s reply—not necessarily _meant_ as an agreement with Emily, but coming off that way all the same.

“Yeah, considering you two were panicking earlier at the _concept_ of bears, like, existing? On the planet? Not a whole lotta room to talk, I think.”

“Oh please.”

After an admittedly short moment of deliberation, Beth crossed the room to the fireplace, twiddling its controls until the pilot light caught and a fire burst into the grate. “Maybe this’ll help speed things alo—”

She’d only half-stood from her crouch when she saw it: a flicker of light outside the window. It must’ve been her imagination… _had_ to have been her imagination…or maybe just a reflection of the fireplace, because…

Well, because it had sure looked to her like there had been _fire_ out there in the snow.

A reflection…yeah, had to be. They were too far away to be seeing the fire pit, so…reflection. Definitely. What else _could_ it have been? It wasn’t like people just wandered around the woods with flamethrowers, after all. Pfft.

Still, her earlier conversation with Hannah and Josh returned to her full force, and she found it hard to _stop_ looking out the window; it was as though some part of her brain was genuinely expecting to see something in the trees. Some _thing_ , or…

“You sure it’s a good idea to leave that on if we’re going back outside?” Jess asked, and if she noticed Beth wasn’t really paying attention to them she didn’t show it. “I mean, like, you’re not supposed to leave _candles_ burning if you’re not there, so…”

“Do you have a _better_ idea?” Emily asked. “I don’t know about you, but _I_ don’t want to have to go to sleep tonight huddled together with any of you people just so I don’t wake up to find I lost three toes to frostbite, thanks.”

“Um, sooo you’d rather go to sleep in the snow? Y’know, when the lodge—”

“What? _Burns down?_ Please. Do you even listen to yourself?”

“It could happen! This whole place is made of wood! And in case you forgot, Miss Four-Point-Oh, wood freaking _burns_.”

“Yeah, I’m so sure that the state-of-the-art lodge constructed by the best architects money can buy, the lodge with about six built-in fireplaces, is _exactly_ as flammable as—”

“Wow. _Wow_. I was just saying—”

“And _I’m_ just saying—”

“…did you guys see that?”

Squabble forgotten (for the most part, anyway), Jess and Emily turned to find Beth still peering out of one of the great room’s massive windows, her head moving from side to side as though searching for something.

“See what?”

A sliver of her tongue poked out to wet her lips. No matter how she twisted or turned or moved on the tips of her toes, Beth couldn’t find any sign of what had caught her eye. “I think…I thought I just saw a guy out there…”

“A _guy?_ ” Emily repeated, joining her at the window.

“Yeah. I could’ve _sworn_ I just saw someone walk past…right over there.”

The last to make her way over, Jess gave Beth a shove. “Ha ha haaaaa. _Suuuper_ funny.”

“I’m not—hey! Push me again, see what happens,” she said without any real anger behind it. No, she didn’t have time for that, not with her attention still riveted by the snow outside. “I’m telling you, I saw someone walking around just over there. By the trees.”

“Ugh. You’re just trying to scare us! Here we are in the middle of Absolutely Nowhere, population us, surrounded by trees and bears and…” With a grimace, Jess’s eyes flicked to the opposite wall, “ _Skulls_ , and—”

“I’m not trying to scare you, you big babies.” Beth let out an exasperated breath as a thought occurred to her—it churned in her brain for less than a second before it clicked. Then everything made sense. “… _I’m_ not trying to scare you,” she groaned, “But I bet my darling brother _is_.” She turned away from the window then, setting her arms akimbo with her hands on her hips. “Yeah, know what? Forget I said anything. One _hundred_ percent chance that moron’s trying to creep us out.” She kept the depth of her suspicion to herself; namely that the others were probably in on this idiocy too, just sitting out there _waiting_ to hear them yell or see them run over in a blind, stumbling panic. Knowing Josh, he’d probably proposed it as some sort of ‘healing exercise,’ a way to bring Jess and Emily back into each other’s good graces, if only to stop their annoying bickering. “Fucking goon…”

The noise Emily made was something caught between a groan and a gag. “Truly,” she deadpanned, “You won the genetic lottery with that one.”

“Uh huh, tell me about it.” Pulling her hat firmly over her ears again, Beth fixed them both with a perfectly flat, perfectly unenthusiastic smile. “So here’s what we do. We go back out there, _calmly_ , and if any one—Any. Fucking. One.—of them makes some kind of crack about us getting spooked being in the lodge alone or anything, we shrug. Don’t mention _shit_ about shadows, or noises, or seeing people, or _anything_. Ruin the joke, ruin his good time.”

A corner of Emily’s mouth turned up. Jess’s pout became a sly smile. Miracle of miracles, the two of them met each other’s eyes in a show of solidarity, and the heavens themselves parted as a chorus of angels sang.

“I think we can manage that.”

“Yeah,” Jess beamed, her nose crinkling with mischief, “After all the stupid shit we’ve had to sit through tonight? I’d be _happy_ to ruin his dumb joke.”

Unsure whether it was the prospect of crushing Josh’s fun or the relief of Emily and Jess calling a momentary truce putting such a spring in her step, Beth grinned and opened the door to head out into the snow once more. “C’mon,” she snickered, “We gotta almost be done by now anyway, right?”

“One can fucking hope.”

“One can fucking _hope._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm...who hasn't told a story yet, I wonder...
> 
> Who hasn't told...a story...yet...


	14. Beth’s Story: The Tale of the Itch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant tags for this chapter: Self-mutilation, blood, body horror (specifically skin-related), insulting language (i.e., bitch)

Strangely enough (at least as far as the three of them were concerned), no one mentioned anything about…anything. Not the lodge, not being spooked, nothing. Somehow that only made them _more_ suspicious of what was to come.

“Done powdering your noses, ladies?” Chris asked, his frankly insulting British accent reprising its earlier appearance.

Emily and Jess made their own derisive little noises and rolled their eyes before sitting, and a ripple passed through the circle as they realized—slowly but surely—that oh praise the lord, hallelujah, it seemed the storm that had been thundering between the two had given way to another one of its momentary pauses.

“Well, now that everyone’s all comfy-cozy again…” Josh drawled, “Looks like it’s your time to shine, little one.” He turned to Beth, skewering a marshmallow on a stick in a single, unsavory motion; to Ashley, at least, it felt very much like something a shrike would do.

Which, to be fair, was probably precisely what Josh was going for. He was exhausting like that.

“Oh God, are you serious?” Beth asked. “Why’s it gotta be _my_ turn?”

“To quote, uh, oh, right, _you_ : This is what happens when you leave the circle, dear sister of mine…decisions get made.”

The groan she let out was mostly just for show. _Mostly_. Truth be told, she’d known since standing that this would happen…the only people who hadn’t told a story yet were her and Josh, after all, and there was no reality where Josh _wouldn’t_ insist on going last. To even _consider_ such a thing, let alone allow herself to _believe_ it? Ridiculous. Preposterous. Downright stupid.

“Uh huh. Fine, fine. Mine’s gonna be a hard act to follow, though, I’ll warn you now.” There were a few chuckles at that, but they were scattered at best. The night had been long, the forest was dark, and it was decidedly past everyone’s bedtime. There’d been more and more yawns breaking up the past few stories, if she really thought back on it…yawns and, well, temper tantrums.

Again, that was fine by her. Beth wasn’t Josh—she didn’t need the group to cling onto her every word, she just needed to finish so he’d shut up and let them all go to bed. So with that in mind she stretched her arms out, made herself comfortable, and droned through the introduction. Did she still think the _Are You Afraid of the Dark?_ angle was stupid as hell? Yup. Did she have the energy to argue with her sweet, precious brother? Absolutely fucking not. “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, this is the Tale of the Sister.”

Josh flicked his wrist and the pine needles crackled in the fire.

***

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away—

***

“Okay, hang on. I’m sensing some smartassery.”

Beth reached across Sam to grab the hem of Josh’s beanie and give it a good yank. “Shut up. This is my time.”

***

—there was a brilliant young lady. She lived a hard life, surrounded as she was by idiots of the highest degree—

***

“Yeah, okay, again, can’t help feeling like maybe this isn’t an actual story.”

“Stop talking.”

***

—but the true tragedy of her life was that she never received any of the appreciation she _deserved_ for being so brilliant. Instead she was forced to live day-by-day, constantly fixing the messes her two siblings made everywhere they went. Well, all right, one sibling wasn’t _too_ bad, but her brother? Oh, her brother was a real moron—

***

“I can see you’re set on making a point here, huh?”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

***

—and _oh_ , the messes he made. Every day she found herself trying to apologize for the weird shit he said and did in front of their friends or worse, absolute strangers who had _zero_ context for his special brand of bullshit, and every night she fell asleep knowing she was one step closer to dying.

Did she long for death’s sweet embrace? Perhaps. Yet a part of her knew that in her final moments, as the heart monitor went flat and beeped its ultimate beep, her last thought would be for the life she never got to live, so distracted had she been by trying to make her siblings seem _marginally_ less lame than they actually were.

The end.

***

With grand, sweeping hand motions, Beth bent at the waist in a bow. “There you have it.” She grabbed her drink from where she’d set it down before popping into the lodge with Jess and Em and took a sip for emphasis. “Good luck following that,” she said again. “I know I set the bar pretty high, but I have _so_ much faith in you, Josh. I think you can probably tell a story at least _half_ as compelling as that.”

“…well, as someone who _also_ spends a considerable portion of their life apologizing to strangers for Josh’s behavior, I was really moved by that story, Beth.”

Josh didn’t even glance her way. “Thanks Ash, you’re a peach,” he said, keeping his eyes on his sister. “While I’m _flattered_ to feature so prominently in your story—”

“Hmm? Oh, no. Nonono. Story wasn’t about you. Or even _me!_ Remember? We all said none of our stories were about us.” Beth met his gaze with a soft and sisterly smile. A soft and sisterly smile that somehow managed to come across as _incredibly infuriating_. “Any similarities to people alive or dead are _purely_ coincidental, sooo—”

A wad of pine needles hit her square in the face.

Beth froze. For an entire second, she froze. So too did everyone else around the fire. Then she spat out the few needles that had stuck to her lips and lunged towards Josh.

Had Sam and Hannah both not grabbed her by the back of her jacket, none of the others would’ve been shocked by the shoving match that would’ve ensued. Honestly, they probably would’ve clapped. (There might’ve even been a few groans of disappointment as the girls managed to sit Beth down on the bench again, but over the whistling of the wind it was difficult to tell.)

“This is what I’m talking about!”

“Sit down and tell a legit story, you dolt. You’re a goddamn _Washington_ , we’re the horror _family_ —” Josh didn’t seem to notice the sigh of distress Hannah let out at that, “—you’re gonna let them show you up? Everyone _else_ told a serious story!”

“I didn’t.”

“I—yes, thank you.” Josh flung a hand out towards Mike. “You wanna be like him, Beth? You wanna walk away from this fire on the same narrative note _Mike_ left on? _Mike?_ Mike. Really. You wanna be like _Mike_.”

Her eyes flicked across the fire to Mike. She considered him for a moment, her gaze going distant as she recalled his story…and then she groaned. “Fine!”

“Fine…?”

“Fine, I’ll start over! Jesus…”

A jeering smirk turning the corners of her mouth up, Jess turned to Mike. “ _That’s_ gotta sting.”

He shrugged. “You people just don’t appreciate my creativity. No one gave a shit about van Gogh until he was dead.”

“Yeah,” Emily drawled, “You’re definitely on par with _van Gogh_.”

“ _Thank you_. See, you get it!”

Beth blew a raspberry that fogged the air around her. “Blah blah blah, this is the Tale of the…uh, the Itch.”

“I’m sorry, the Tale of the _Bitch?_ ”

“I’m about five seconds away from making a run for the lodge and locking every last one of you out here in the snow for the night. Shut up and listen, or so help me God…”

***

Once there was—

***

“Beeeth…” warned Josh.

***

Once there was a girl—

***

“This is sounding like another bullshit joke, Beth…”

***

Once there was a girl who—

***

“Bethany Elizabeth Washington, I swear to Christ—”

Beside him, Chris’s eyes widened. Anyone who glanced his way was greeted by a heartwarming sight: Like a child walking downstairs on Christmas morning only to see all the presents Santa had left them, an expression of such joy, such _excitement_ , dawned in his eyes, such that it lit up his entire face. “ _Beth Beth?_ Is the name on your birth certificate _Beth Beth?!_ ”

“This isn’t a joke story! Let me get through it! Next person to interrupt me goes _into_ the fire, and I’m _so_ not kidding—I can afford a _real_ good lawyer! I can and will dodge _every_ charge thrown at me!”

***

Once there was a girl who made the biggest mistake of her life in Cancun. That mistake had nothing to do with booze or drugs or money or sleeping with the wrong person—it was smaller than that, but bigger, too.

That girl was me. And, at least in the beginning, I thought the mistake was not wearing sunscreen. I wasn’t totally wrong there…but I wasn’t totally _right_ either.

To give you some context, every year, once it starts getting cold, my family and I take a trip somewhere warm. It’s just like…one last hoorah before we have to deal with the snow, you know? Anyway, usually those trips are uneventful as fuck. Predictable. Boring, even. And my dumbass _always_ ends up getting sunburnt. I always have noble intentions—namely a tan that I can look at during winter and go ‘Oh, right, the sun exists somewhere out there,’ and keep hope alive—but noble intentions don’t count for much when you turn yourself into a lobster, I’ve found.

This trip wasn’t any different. I stood in front of the mirror in my bathroom and grimaced, seeing just how _red_ most of my skin was. It was angry-looking, if you know what I mean, that gnarly color that your skin goes when you _know_ it’s going to peel. The worst, though? The absolute _worst?_

It itched so. Fucking. Bad.

I could see a couple tiny welts on the backs of my arms when I turned in just the right way, and I knew what _that_ meant: Not just sunburn, sweetie, oh no, I had sun _poisoning_. And I had it in a big, bad way. No matter how I twisted around I couldn’t see my back, but when I ran my hand across the skin back there I could feel a few more bumps, and _God_ that sucked. Nothing worse than an itchy back, huh?

So I pretty much _bathed_ in aloe vera gel that first night, and hey! It seemed to work okay. Except…well, except that I woke up in the middle of the night because it itched so bad.

I did that thing everyone does when you wake up before you need to: I checked if I needed to pee…nope…checked if I was thirsty…nope…checked the time…super early…and then I got really quiet to try and see if it had been a noise that woke me up…nothing. It was just that stupid itch.

I wiggled this way and that on my bed before reaching behind me to scratch at it, and after a while I managed to fall asleep. No harm, no foul, right?

Wrong.

I knew I’d fucked up when I got out of the shower the next day and realized there was blood on my sheets. Not a lot, but enough. Little red speckles all over the part of my sheets where my back had been while I was sleeping. Lo and behold, as I slopped another helping of aloe gel on my sunburn, there was a tiny bit of blood mixed in with the goop on my hands when I finished.

“Shit,” I remember saying when I saw that. “This is gonna be a bitch when it peels.”

For what it’s worth, I was pretty spot-on in that assessment. It peeled off in _sheets_ for the better part of a week. I’d sit down on my bed and scratch where the itch was the worst and come away with a little lip of dead skin in my fingers. So then I’d pick at it—like you do, just kind of scraping at it between my nails—and next thing I knew, I’d have a whole strip going, winding behind my arm and well past my shoulder blade, a translucent flap of skin long enough and big enough to curl at the ends. And it. Was. Endless. It felt like no matter how much I picked at it, no matter how much I peeled, there was just always _more_.

Imagine…imagine that thing we did as kids. Putting a little layer of glue on your palms and letting it dry before peeling it off in one go. Know what I mean? Okay, now multiply that by twenty.

Obviously it _did_ stop. Like I said, it took almost a week, but it _did_ stop. When it did, most of the redness had gone away with it, and it had become a tan that, okay, I’ll admit…I was pretty psyched about. Problem was…the itching kept up.

Oh.

Oh it fucking kept up.

That convinced me to do what I probably should’ve done from the jump—I told my mom. I could see the face she was making in the mirror when I showed her, and it wasn’t a good one.

“Ew,” she said, which _definitely_ made me feel…just… _so_ much better. “You’ve got all these bumps back here, hun!” And I wanted to say something—‘No fucking duh,’ or ‘You don’t say!’—but then she touched one of them and I nearly jumped out of my freshly-shed skin. “That looks like sun poisoning,” she sighed, and then grabbed a bottle of lotion and greased me up.

I had to stop sleeping on my back. That’s the level we’re talking about here. I had to stop sleeping on my back, and not _just_ because of the blood—that kept up too, don’t get me wrong—but because when I slept on my back, the itch felt _worse_. Hot, almost. And…squirmy. Like my skin was literally throbbing or shuddering each time my heart beat.

‘Gross’ didn’t even begin to cover it, by that point.

Lying on my front wasn’t a _lot_ better, and I still would wake up to see little spots of blood in my pajama top or on my blankets, but it was _doable_. Only thing was, when I slept on my stomach, sometimes I’d wake up scratching myself. My arms— _both of them_ —would be tucked behind me, scratching at those fucking welts on my back. Then there wouldn’t just be blood on my clothes or sheets, but under my nails, too.

The amount of lotion I went through during that time was…uh, actually? I don’t want to get into that. It was a lot, okay? Like _a lot_. Absolutely _trashed_ a couple shirts. I had to get used to living in sleep shirts or even just a sports bra. I was just _always_ coated in the stuff, _always_ slippery…

And the itching? Well that didn’t. Fucking. _Stop_.

Is there _anything_ worse than an itch you can’t scratch? Think about it for a sec. Probably no, right? Your answer’s probably ‘no?’ Well I’m here to tell you that you’re dead wrong. There _is_ something worse: an itch you _can_ scratch, an itch you _do_ scratch, and even _still_ it doesn’t go away. _That’s_ worse. That’s so much fucking worse.

Lotion.

Aloe.

When I finally called my doctor around day ten, he was kind enough to tell me from his vacation home in Maui that I should take some antihistamines and hey, if it kept up even after that, he’d have appointments open for the new year. What a sweetheart. So go on, add allergy meds to that list.

Fuck, at a certain point, I literally took a bath in oatmeal because I thought I remembered seeing them do it in an episode of _Rugrats_ where the babies got chickenpox and couldn’t stop scratching.

But this fucking itch! I felt like…like the fucking _Telltale Heart_ guy! It was the only thing I could think about. My skin was _crawling_ whenever anything touched it—my bed, the couch, my clothes, it didn’t matter!

I cut my nails because I was making myself bleed. I was putting actual gouges into my back. And it felt… _so good_ when I was doing it…but then I’d have pain going along with the itch, and the scabs only added to that. I knew I had to stop. I sat on the lid of the toilet as I clipped my nails, hunched over the wastebasket and just… _bawling_. Bawling because I was so angry and frustrated…

And then my dad poked his head into the room. “Gotcha something…” he said when he saw I was crying. He’s something of a, uh…we’ll go with ‘jokester’ to save on time, I guess, it’s close enough, and he doesn’t really know how to handle people being upset outside of making them laugh. So I wasn’t really surprised when he came in doing his dumb ‘oh-you’re-gonna-love-this’ voice, but I _was_ pretty surprised when the thing he brought me turned out to be one of those stupid plastic back scratchers. Y’know, the kind that are make to look like tiny little rakes? Because somehow that’s supposed to be, I dunno, comical? “Figured this would keep you outta the silverware drawer,” he joked, “Can’t have you messing up the good forks now, can we?”

I appreciated it. Didn’t think it was gonna do a whole lotta good, but I _did_ appreciate it. He even got me to laugh a little! Like there I was, a grown-ass adult sitting on the toilet and _sobbing_ because…what? I was _itchy?_ That’s objectively hilarious.

He gave me the back scratcher and then asked to ‘see the damage,’ so I turned and let him look. “Huh,” he said, and I knew he wasn’t joking that time around. “Those bumps have been hanging in for a long time…you sure they’re not bug bites?” After another minute or so he got up again and told me I’d better make an appointment with my doctor ASAP, because he didn’t want to start the year off carting my ass to the emergency room. I laughed at that.

Wasn’t laughing later, though.

That night the itch went from a ten to a _one hundred_ and ten, and I thought I was going to die. Literally die. I started wondering if my dad had had a point about the whole bug bite thing. _Was_ this sun poisoning? Had I fucked up my skin _that_ bad on vacation? Was this something like melanoma starting up? Did we have bed bugs? Was I having an allergic reaction to something? Was the dry winter air making everything worse?

Fuck if I knew! I dug at my back with the scratcher, and it helped…but not as much as I _needed_ it to. It would help for two seconds, then the itch came back twice as intense—hot, throbbing, almost _squirming_ in time with my heart.

Lotion.

Antihistamines.

The scratcher.

Aloe.

I went through the whole thing and then topped it all off with a healthy dose of NyQuil. I was going to sleep—I _needed_ to fucking sleep, I _needed_ to escape that goddamn _itch_ for more than five seconds at a time. I got into bed and I felt the NyQuil start to pull me down, down into sleep, and I was so relieved I almost cried. The itch was there, it didn’t leave, but it was in the back of my mind. I fell into a deep, deep, heavy, medicated sleep…

And then I woke up.

It was nothing like that first night. I didn’t lie there wondering what had done it. I just knew. I knew _instantly_.

My body was slick with an oily mix of lotion and sweat, and I felt like I might suffocate in my pillow from the smell of it. Everything was hot, so _hot_ , hot like I was running a fever, or hot the way a bad scrape gets hot just before it bleeds. _Hot_.

I scratched. And I scratched. And I felt my skin throb under my nubby nails. I got the back scratcher and scratched harder and harder still, feeling the way it bumped over those raised, hard, red welts across my back. I scratched. I cried. I scratched more. And it just. Wasn’t. Enough.

It would _never_ be enough.

There was _no_ relief now—none. Not even when I was digging the edges of the scratcher into my skin as hard as I could. I barely felt it. That was _silent_ against the screaming agony of that _FUCKING ITCH._

To this day, I don’t know why I did it.

Maybe my dad’s joke actually stuck with me.

Maybe I was too bleary from the NyQuil to think logically.

Maybe…and honestly I hate the thought of this one most of all…maybe it was just the natural progression of things. Maybe I _had_ to do it. Maybe it was what I’d been meant to do from the first tingle.

I went downstairs into the kitchen. And I got the fork.

Not _a_ fork— _the_ fork. The serving fork. A big metal monster made for serving fancy casseroles when Gramma visited. I got that fucking fork.

And I scratched.

And goddammit it felt so good until it _didn’t_ , and I felt the metal tines slicing into my skin but still I didn’t fucking care because it was stopping that itch—that unspeakable _itch_. I kept scratching and scratching and I knew I was bleeding, I could feel blood running down my back, but I _still_ couldn’t stop.

 _Plip…plip_.

I heard the first wet smacks of blood hitting the ceramic tiles of the kitchen floor.

_Plip…plip._

I knew I was royally destroying my back but I didn’t care—I just _didn’t fucking care_ —because the itch was stopping! It was _stopping!_

_Plip…plap._

_Plap._

_Plap._

Those sounds…those sounds were different. That was what burst my bubble and brought me back to what I was doing. For some reason that strange sound, the one that was _like_ my blood dripping onto the floor but somehow _wasn’t_ …that was what broke the spell. All at once I realized what I’d done.

My back was _on fire_ it hurt so bad. The pain was ringing in my ears, almost, throbbing like the itch had, only…only the itch was…the itch was gone. The pain was bad, don’t get me wrong, and there was the uncomfortably ticklish creep of blood running down my back, but the itch? There _was_ no itch. It was gone! I was free! I was finally _free!_

Until I noticed something about that tickly trickle on my back. I can’t say I’ve ever bled from that part of my body before, but I know what liquid feels like when it runs down my skin. Something was moving on my back, sliding lower and lower. And the more I thought about it? The more I focused on it?

The less I believed it was blood.

Whatever was on my back wasn’t simply dripping; it was moving with _purpose_. With _intelligence_.

I looked at the fork in my hand and grimaced, nearly gagging when I saw the streaks of red on its tines. I ran it under the kitchen faucet for just a second so I wouldn’t have to see that anymore, and as I turned back, I caught my first look at the floor. My first _good_ look at the floor.

There was blood there, no doubt about it, but there was something else.

There was something _in_ the blood.

Something _moving_.

I didn’t want to. God help me, I didn’t want to. But I knew what I had to do. I found the light switch and I turned it on so I wouldn’t be able to pretend I wasn’t seeing what I knew was right in front of my face. I turned the light on and I screamed. I couldn’t help it. I could hear the clamor of my parents stumbling out of bed as soon as I clapped my hands to my face, but I didn’t care.

Suddenly I was twice as aware of that squirming, that wriggling feeling on my back, and as I’d woken up so many nights since getting back from that fucking vacation—that fucking vacation where I hadn’t used any sunscreen—I jammed both of my arms behind myself to grab at my back. Not to scratch it, oh no, even touching it was _agony_ with all of the deep gashes I’d carved into myself.

But I had to get them off me.

I had to get them _out_ of me.

See, my dad had been right all along. As I stared down at the mass of pus-colored _things_ writing in the spatters of my blood, I didn’t know if they were maggots or larvae or something in between, but I knew one thing for damn sure: My _real_ mistake hadn’t been forgetting my sunscreen, but forgetting my _bug-repellant._

***

What was left of Beth’s breath left her in a rush. She hung her head between her knees for a moment to ease some of the tension that had collected in her neck since she’d gotten into the groove of the story, and when she looked up again, she found herself on the receiving end of eight very, _very_ distressed looks.

It did not go unnoticed that there wasn’t a single person in the circle holding a thermos or toasting a marshmallow. All of the s’more ingredients had been cast aside, half-eaten graham crackers and marshmallows littering the snow around the fire pit.

Carefully— _very_ carefully—Josh raised his hands from his knees, beginning a slow-clap that absolutely no one else joined in on. “Now _that_ …is what I’m fucking _talking about!_ ” He looked around the circle, dropping the slow-clap after another second or two when he saw how grey all their faces looked. “So?” he asked, his grin positively wolfish, “Do we accept this submission?”

“ _No_ ,” Hannah said. She looked from Josh to Beth, sizing her up as though this was her first time _meeting_ her twin, like she was only just now seeing her for who she actually was. “That was—”

“Fan-fucking-tastic?” Josh laughed.

“— _awful!_ Like, I’m sorry Beth, but ew? Just… _ew!_ ”

“Yeah, I think I have to go nay on that one…sorry,” Ashley agreed from the other side of the fire, her knees pulled up to her chest and her teeth bared in a grimace that seemed carved into her face.

“ _Josh_ , I expected that from. But like… _you?!_ ” Joining Hannah in the ‘I-don’t-know-who-you-are’ look, Chris shook his head, “I-I’m starting to actually _worry_ about your whole gene pool. Sweet _Jesus_ , Beth Beth, that was…eugh.”

She leveled her gaze at him for only a moment. “Don’t call me Beth Beth. And hey, you _told_ me to tell a serious story! That’s all I did. The hell do I care what you guys think?” Still, she was _clearly_ proud of herself, her grin maybe not as wide as Josh’s…but getting there. Definitely getting there. “Maybe now you’ll think twice about making me do this stupid shit again.”

“Or maybe I’ll just have you go first, next time.”

“Oh God, please tell me there isn’t going to be a ‘next time…’”

She’d been holding her head in her hands ever since Beth had stopped, but at that point Emily squeezed her eyes shut too. Her fingers pressed hard into her temples, and some part of her hoped deep down that if she kept the pressure up, maybe she could get rid of the mental image of those squirming bugs sometime before she went to bed. “Okay, we’re moving on,” she said in a tone that left zero room for debate. “I don’t care what happens next, but we’re going to keep moving and I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that and if anyone else even mentions it _in passing_ , I will make you wish you’d stayed at home with the stomach flu this weekend, so help me God.”

“Yeah, uh, I’m…I’m with Em on this one,” Matt piped in. “The only person who hasn’t gone yet is you, right Josh?”

Mike let out a breath that sounded more than a bit like a post-vomit moan. “Fuck me sideways… _now_ we’re in for it.”

“Y’know, Matt, I think you might be right!” If such a thing were possible, Josh’s smile widened. “You weren’t lying when you said you were gonna be a tough act to follow, Beth, but…well. _I’m_ a tough act to open for.” He poked at what was left of the pine needle pile with his boot and pressed the tip of his tongue to one of his canine teeth, tickled pink that they’d finally— _finally_ —reached this point in the night. “ _My_ _turn_ , boys, ghouls, and other assorted fools. _My turn._ ”


	15. Josh’s Story: The Tale of the Monster of the Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant warnings for this chapter: You see that it's Josh's story, right? You see that? Is that not warning enough???? But for real: Blood, gore, body horror, psychological horror, debasing language about mental health (i.e., crazy, loony, psycho, etc.), EXPLICIT cannibalism - maybe don't eat while reading this one, friendos.

If there was one thing that could be said about Josh, yes, it was that he sure loved to hear himself talk. But (as had already been established), there was something else, too: The guy understood the importance of timing.

For someone like him—namely, someone interested in scaring the unholy bejeezus out of everyone within earshot—going last presented more than just a few benefits. There was the time of night itself, of course; the lateness of the hour weakened the parts of the mind responsible for rational, logical thought and strengthened the imagination until it became a monster in its own right. Each animal that called out, each twig that snapped, every unexpected breeze…he saw the way those things made everyone jump, saw the way their heads whipped around as though looking for attackers that simply weren’t there. Then, of course, there was the fact that the others’ stories had had time enough to chip into even the bravest’s resolve, working deep cracks through their courage and eating holes through their common sense. Even the crappiest among them had no doubt sown _some_ kind of seed in their brains, be it the long grasping fingers of a creature in the night or the panic of not knowing when the next breath would come as the water rose around them or feeling something twitch just below your skin as it ached to get out.

Put simply, their defenses were down. They were so, _so_ down.

And just as a good marinade sank into the tenderized flesh of a pork chop, so too was he about to fill every crevice of their nervous psyches with his own brand of horror—rancid, vulgar, visceral, and above all else, raw.

Then he was going to sleep the best sleep of his goddamn _life_ , knowing the rest of them would be up pacing the floors all night long.

Josh stretched out where he sat, each of his vertebrae popping much to Sam’s obvious disgust. Ah, but he was already grinning at the thought of what he was about to put these fuckers through, so her sound of displeasure barely even registered. “Now that we’ve heard the rest…strap in, friends and fans, because it’s time for the _best_.”

“Yawn,” Beth said, the very picture of sibling exasperation as she tucked her hands deeper into the fluff of her jacket, all the while readjusting herself so she could rest her head on Hannah’s shoulder.

He added her to the list of people he was ignoring and leaned forward to set his elbows on his knees. In the darkness of the night, the fire played strangely across his face to cast shadows where shadows ought not be, and he basked in that dry, cracking heat coming off of the flames. “Without any further ado, I’d like to submit, for the approval of the Midnight Society, _this_ …the Tale of the Monster of the Mine…a story that isn’t really a _story_ at all, but _history_ instead. There’s a reason we stay away from the abandoned mine shafts that dot this beautiful mountain of ours like pockmarks on a preteen’s cheeks, y’know…a reason that has very little to do with asbestos and rotten wood and much, _much_ more to do with what happened deep below the very spot where we sit as I speak. There are places where man simply isn’t meant to intrude, you understand…and one of those places exists silently within this mountain, breathing, biding its time, _waiting_. That’s what I’ll be telling you about tonight.”

As he reached over to grab yet another handful of pine needles, Mike couldn’t help but snicker. “God, you seriously get off on this crap, don’t you?”

There was laughter, but for his part Josh only shot the briefest glare of displeasure Mike’s way. Then he threw the pine needles into the fire, making its slowly dying embers crackle and brighten for the final time that night. _Then_ , of course, he began to tell his story.

***

They always knew there was something wrong with the mine. Yeah, something was _very_ wrong with the mine, but that wasn’t anything new. All of them were veterans of the work, strapping men both young and not-so-young, and as they’d followed the boom north to tap into whatever vein they could find, roaming vampires of radium and tin and—if they were lucky—gold, they’d seen things. Heard things. Felt things. Smelled them and tasted them too, but nothing like this.

Nothing like what was waiting for them in the North West mine.

Are you familiar with the phrase ‘canary in the coalmine?’ Know where it comes from? Back in the old days, the days before your great-grandparents even got it in their heads to settle down and make whoopee and start families of their own, miners would bring the little guys into the dark with them while they worked. If the birds started getting sick, if they started _dying_ …well, then the miners knew to hightail it out of there. Birds are tiny, you see, and they’re fragile. If someone chipped their way into something nasty, some clear, silent poison that they couldn’t sniff out themselves, those brave feathered soldiers would guard the front lines and die like heroes, giving the men enough time to climb their way out into the sun where the air was a little less likely to choke the life from them.

I’ll go ahead and assuage the fear you might be feeling for those birds right now—I know we have some bleeding hearts in the audience tonight. This is my solemn promise to you all: Nothing foul will befall any such fowl in this story. The canaries will be fine. Cross my heart and hope to die, the canaries will be fine.

The men, I’m afraid to say, will not.

Remember the canaries, though. Keep them in the back of your mind. And while you’re at it, maybe spend a couple minutes turning over in your head what it must’ve felt like to be down there, so far from the sun and the fresh air…only to see one of those little guys start to wobble. To see another living being begin to go pale, to tremble, to fall to the ground, to become _sick_. To wonder how long until whatever got _it_ will get _you_.

You think about that for awhile.

When they began their first descent, a shudder ran through the men. Now, none but the oldest and most superstitious would say as much, but there _was_ a shudder. The mine was old, and it was cold, and it was dark—as most mining systems are, I guess—but there was something else too, something inside of it that wasn’t quite as easy to name. A…a _feeling_ , let’s say. A feeling that set their teeth on edge. They wouldn’t be able to place it until much, much later, and maybe even _too_ late, at that, but it was the feeling that comes with being watched. It was that burning cold prickle on the back of your neck, the finger of ice that creeps like slime up your spine before dripping back down again.

But they didn’t recognize that at the time, like I said, so for now, let’s just call it a feeling. A nasty one. One that they all pretended they didn’t notice. But they did.

For a few weeks, it was business as usual. These were men, I’ll remind you, who were following the boom, just as so many others before them had. They left their families, kissed their mommies and their pretty little wives goodbye, and they went where the veins in the rock led them. They understood the job, is what I’m trying to tell you, and for a bit, the routine of it all lulled them into a sort of calm. They traded names, traded stories…some became good enough pals to sneak peeks into wallets, to see snapshots of wives or honeys or sweet little babes still in swaddling clothes. People hear ‘brothers in arms’ and their minds turn to the war; their business called for arms too, though, if arms of a different sort, and brothers are brothers no matter what battle’s being fought. Building friendships and breaking rock—it felt so normal that they let down their guard.

The veins were fat, after all. And the canaries were fine.

For a few weeks, I said, it was business as usual. Then they hit the drop. All considering, it wasn’t that much—maybe twenty, twenty-five feet—small potatoes for an operation like this, but that’s when the feeling came back. They worked their way down, planting ladders and tracks where they could, each step bringing them that much deeper into the belly of the mountain. But the men? The men felt the shudder.

There came a day about two months in where none of them spoke. Not a word. Save for the endless clanging of picks on stone and the rumble of carts on tracks, there was nothing. This wasn’t a conscious thing; it wasn’t as though they’d all agreed on it before starting the day. It just…happened. It was like they were listening for something, trying to hear a sound they were only half aware of—something just outside of their understanding. Maybe if they were quiet enough, or if they really strained their ears, they could catch it. Hear it. Figure out what it was they were _almost_ listening to.

Or maybe, just _maybe_ , they were afraid something was listening to _them_.

Oh, that was another feeling they couldn’t place at first—the sinking sensation that something was waiting on the other side of the rock, an unseen ear pressed flush to the cold stone heart of the mine, listening to them. Learning from them.

 _Waiting_ for them.

Did they hear anything? Who knows. My guess is that _someone_ did, or at least _thought_ he did, because a story started rippling through the ranks: There’s something in the North West mine, that story went, and it isn’t thrilled that any of us are here.

***

“ _Raccoons_ ,” Mike said in a stage whisper more than loud enough to carry across the entire circle. He grinned at the laughter he received for that chestnut, remaining perfectly oblivious to the tight, perfunctory smiles on the faces of the few who knew how little Josh appreciated being interrupted when he was in the groove. “No fair copying offa me, man! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know I brought my A-game, but…”

“So much for being the scariest one,” Jess added, pooching her lower lip into a pout. “Like, thanks for the history lesson or whatever, but when does the _scariness_ come in, exactly?”

Chris and Ashley exchanged a brief look before lowering their eyes to the fire again. Given how dark it was, it was hard to tell…but they were wincing.

Still, Josh kept his expression impassive. His smile was almost _pleasant_ despite the way the flames flickered across his face. “We’ll get there,” he said, crossing one of his legs over the other and leaning in towards the fire again. “If I may.” And then he continued, his breath pluming out into the air before him.

***

Clocking in and seeing you were assigned to the North West was the quickest way to sour your stomach. Some of the old-timers actually started to refuse—said they’d heard stories in town, stories passed down from granddaddies or granddaddies’ daddies, whispers about curses, legends of great, hungry _things_ living down inside of the earth, in that sacred place where man was never meant to go.

But my friends, there are three inevitabilities in this world of ours: death, taxes, and the crushing weight of capitalism. Those last two don’t give a single solitary shit about curses, and the first comes for us all, regardless, so as I’m sure you can imagine, refusing didn’t do a whole lot of good.

“Bitch and moan all you want,” the foreman would say, smiling just as sweetly as you please, “If _you_ don’t want this job, I know plenty of men who’d be happy enough to take your place.”

So they worked. What other choice did they have? Wives and babies back home, parents needing to buy food, rent’s gotta get paid, and everyone knows what happens if the paychecks don’t get sent. Of course they worked—of _course_ they did! They were, you’ll pardon the pun, between a rock and a hard place. So they worked. They mined. And no matter how deep they got, the canaries were fine. Nothing bad _ever_ happened to the birdies, not even as the stories began to pile up.

Stories like what happened to old Ephraim Bilkes.

One day as they were packing up, praising the dinner bell like they might’ve shouted hallelujah to a pulpit, they realized they were one short. They counted heads again and, sure enough, they were missing someone. By their reckoning, it was Ephraim, and had it been anyone else they would’ve left him to fend for himself…that’s what he would’ve deserved for wandering so far off from the rest of the work, you understand. But as it stood, Ephraim was an old-timer. The _oldest_ of the old-timers, actually, and during a time where thirty was considered awfully old to be slinging ore down there in the dark, he was downright _ancient_ at fifty-four.

So they went looking for him, and it didn’t take them too long to find him after all; since they were all packed up for the day, there wasn’t any of the usual noise.

They could hear him screaming just fine.

Not to cut away from the story-in-a-story, but in case you’ve never been lucky enough to spend any time in one, here’s the thing about mines: Sound carries real strange inside of them. It echoes, sure, but all those tunnels _throw_ sounds too. Makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly _where_ what you’re hearing is coming from. And oh, there were tunnels in the North West mine, more tunnels than you could shake a stick at, whatever that’s supposed to mean, so old Ephraim’s screams weren’t as much help as you might think.

Eventually they came to a split in the path, the main track forking into three. “Ephraim!” one of the men called out. He leaned into the fork leading to the left, yelling again. “Ephraim, you there?”

And the screaming seemed to lessen. It got a bit quieter…but it didn’t stop, and there certainly wasn’t any answer.

“Ephraim!” tried another one of the men, leaning into the path dead ahead. “Ephraim, can you hear us?”

And from the darkness, miraculously, there came a reply. “I’m here!” cried a voice, weak and wavering and distant. “I’m hurt! Goddamn it, I’m hurt!”

“Ephraim!” yelled a third man, hanging by one hand into the path leading to the right. “Ephraim, you sonuvabitch, call out!”

And from the right path, there _also_ came a voice, much louder, and much _closer_ , than the last. “I’m _here!_ I’m _here!_ I’m _HEEERE!_ ”

They knew time lost was blood lost, and if the old bastard was actually hurt—and it was sounding very much like he was—they couldn’t risk going down the wrong path. So two men split off for the branch leading straight ahead to follow the papery voice they’d heard first. They found Ephraim Bilkes there, some fifty yards off, crouched behind a cart and gasping for breath, one strap of his suspenders snapped and hanging limp at his side, his work shirt soaked through with blood.

But two men had also split off for the branch heading to the right, meaning to follow the louder voice. The stronger voice. The _closer_ voice. Those two men were never seen again. I’ll get to them, though. I’ll get to them in good time.

It was a close thing, pulling Ephraim out of the mine. He was a strong man, of course, he worked the mine after all, but he wasn’t a _big_ man. The problem was a little more complicated than his weight. See, Ephraim was hysterical. Thrashing like a fish caught on a line. And since he was literally _dripping_ blood, keeping a good grip on him was easier said than done. He said a lot of things as the others dragged him into the fresh air, things about eyes glowing bright in the shadows, flesh pale and white as a corpse poking out of the underbrush, the damned crawling up from Hell itself claw by miserable claw…but when they got him out into the dim moonlight and saw the wound already beginning to fester in the flesh between his neck and shoulder, flesh that looked _nothing_ like how a man’s should and _everything_ like ground chuck from the grocer’s, they wrote it off as nothing more than fever-talk.

The medic would explain later—much later—that poor Mister Bilkes had stumbled on the job, likely tripping over some patch of the very track he was found on. A shelf of rock or even a carelessly mislaid pickaxe caught his fall. It was a shame, really, but it was part of the job.

The men who’d dragged him out that night were of a slightly different opinion. They knew what it looked like when a rock fetched you one, and those wounds never looked like _that_. Rocks, you understand, don’t usually have _teeth_.

The men of the North West mine knew there was no stone in God’s creation that did _that_ to old Ephraim Bilkes. The man had been _bitten_. And whatever had done the biting…well, they knew it had gotten the two who went down that other path. The path where the voice had come through so much clearer, so much _louder_. The path that led to the right.

Sound carries strange in mines.

***

“Right path, wrong time…” Chris sighed, “You hate to hear it.” He let out a deflated cough when Ashley jabbed her elbow into his side. It didn’t actually _hurt_ , per se—he was wearing layers enough that he barely felt it—but _he’d_ thought the joke had been pretty solid.

So did Josh, apparently. He pointed a finger his way with a jovial “Ah!” before grabbing another beer out of the snow and twisting the lid off. He took two huge swallows, immediately relieving his throat. It had, surprise, somehow gone bone-dry.

“…well?” Emily asked after a moment. She sounded almost _indignant_ , really.

He lifted his eyebrows as he drank, meeting her gaze across the fire.

She rolled her eyes and shoved her hands into her pockets. “What _was_ it?”

“Yeah,” Matt piped in, grimacing as he tried to extinguish the flaming marshmallow at the end of his stick. “What was—aw crap.”

It was a good thing he still had the bottle to his lips—it meant none of them could see the shit-eating grin on his face. “The monster of the mine!” Josh said cheerfully, “Where’d you think I got the name for the story?” He took one last swig and jammed his bottle back into the snow bank behind him. “But don’t worry, kids, we’re not done yet, we’re not even close! Like I said, all in good time. All in good time.”

***

Ephraim Bilkes lived, bless his soul, but he never set foot in that system again. He spent the rest of his impressively long life behind a heavy door in the Blackwood Sanatorium just over yonder ridge, raving about fish-belly flesh and screams from perdition. Not all too different from the things his bunkmates screamed about, to be fair. Now, he never really came out of it, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have been too surprised to hear they never found the other two who went looking for him that night.

And they never did. Not a trace. No bones, no clothes, no telltale scratches on the walls. Nothing. They’d simply walked down that path and never turned up again. It was almost as though they’d never existed to begin with. You might be thinking to yourselves, “Well how can that be? How can two people _disappear?_ How can they just fall off the face of the earth, never to be seen again?” I’m here to tell you that in the Pines, it’s more likely than you might believe. It’s more likely than you might be _comfortable_ with. It’s a fact of life in Blackwood County: Sometimes people go missing. Miners most of all.

But the miners who remained had no time for such thoughts. They kept digging. Oh yes they did. They kept digging in the North West mine because the mine might’ve taken those two men from them, but it kept giving in return. Much like the Lord, it giveth, it taketh away, praise be, _hallelu’._ What happened to Ephraim and the others? Well that was a run of bad luck to be sure, but bad luck can’t last forever, and hell, if you want an omelet, you gotta break an egg every now and again, don’t you? The boss didn’t care what shape the old man’s wounds were, and he didn’t care who had a yellow streak and who didn’t—either they worked the goddamn mine, or they could walk.

So because they knew their families couldn’t go on living without food in their bellies, they worked that mine. But the party that was there the night of Ephraim’s attack got real careful. _Real_ careful. They _never_ went down that path that wound itself to the right, not if they could help it. Call it superstition. Call it a feeling. Either way, time passed as time tends to do, and that story grew teeth of its own. There was a monster in the North West mine. It almost got Ephraim Bilkes one night, and when it couldn’t take him it took two others, so woe betide anyone foolish enough to wander off alone.

This, of course, only served to make things worse. Stories always do.

Funny thing about stories…gossip, rumors, legends, superstitions, tales told inside or outside of class…they’re parasites, you see. They’re passed from one person to another to another, and they don’t care who their host is; they live inside the dark folds of your mind, the places where light and warmth cannot go, and there they thrive, living like fungus growing in the mouth of a corpse. They plant roots, and those roots are thick and strong and they’re fucking _deep_. Your mind feeds the stories, the stories feed your mind, and it becomes this endless, recursive cycle where nothing is lost and nothing is gained, and then one day, that story sprouts spores and passes on to infect someone else.

The men caught the story of Ephraim as they might’ve caught cold. And their minds burned with it as they might’ve burned with fever. But the canaries were fine.

And again time passed—as time has a way of doing—and while no one ever forgot what had happened to Ephraim, the memory of that night softened a bit around the edges. And why shouldn’t it? Ephraim was safe in his padded room where he could sit and weave baskets or twiddle his thumbs from dusk until dawn, surrounded by all those nice young men in their clean white coats…while the miners had to deal with the North West.

Then came the night the electricity went.

I hate to keep doing this, really I do, but just looking at your faces I can tell that you’ve never had the pleasure of working down there in the bowels of the earth where the air is wet and black and sits in the bottom of your lungs like grave dirt—what you need to understand is the kind of darkness I’m talking about. Close your eyes. Right now.

***

“Close…your eyes,” Josh repeated, letting himself smirk only once he was sure every last one of them had done it. “Good. Dark, innit? Now, without opening your eyes, bring your hands up. Cover ‘em. Those of you with glasses might want to exercise a little extra caution, but…”

And without a single complaint, they did. He watched as, one after another, the lot of them covered their eyes, looking like so many carved wooden monkeys sitting on his grandma’s shelves. _See no evil_ , he thought to himself, and had to bite back a chuckle.

It was perhaps an obnoxious thing, his need to remind them every so often what he could do with his words if he _really_ put his mind to it, but in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t everyone allowed a little obnoxiousness for the sake of their ego? A few of them had told pretty solid stories that night, and all right, a few of them had even told their stories well, but none of them— _none of them_ —really managed to hit both of those at once. Ashley had needed to stop and read off notecards, Mike had kept everyone’s attention right until the moment he went and fucked everything up, Sam had had to field questions about casting choices…maybe _Beth_ had come close, he’d give her that much, but even _Beth_ had been repeatedly interrupted. Interrupted by him, yeah, but…but that didn’t matter.

What _did_ matter was he had all of them doing an abridged version of the Macarena in perfect silence simply because he’d told them to do it in his narrator’s voice.

“Darker than before, yeah? Imagine that level of darkness, of not being able to see a damn thing, of having your eyes closed and covered and every speck of light blocked out…and then imagine it’s even darker than that. _Now_ you’re beginning to understand what it’s like down there. Go ahead, open your eyes again if you want. Or keep them closed, if you prefer. Doesn’t make any fuckin’ difference to me.”

***

There was no light in the North West mine except for what they brought with them. Now, they were lucky enough, and the mine was successful enough, that they’d had a string of bulbs installed through the main paths, but we’re talking back in the day where those bulbs were small and dim and prone to flickering out if you even looked at them the wrong way. Still, it was better than nothing.

And one night in the middle of winter, _nothing_ was precisely what Eugene Bouchard and John Murphy found themselves with.

They’d been two of the men tasked with building a water wheel down there in the pit where all that digging and mining and stripping of the rock had revealed a reservoir too deep to be easily drained. Lord, thy name is irony, because the water wheel they’d been spending the past week on was meant to power backup generators in the case of a failure topside…a failure like the one that overtook them then, the lights flickering, flickering, dimming…and then dying gently as a lover’s sigh. When those lights went out, the world simply ceased to be.

Your eyes don’t adjust to that kind of darkness, not even to show you the grainy green-grey outlines you sometimes see when you wake up in the middle of the night; no, there’s simply that _nothing_ I mentioned before. The world stops being three-dimensional. Stay down in that darkness long enough and your senses start to go screwy—up is down, left is right, the air feels thinner than it should. For you or me, being in that kind of dark is unthinkable, _unimaginable_.

For Eugene and John, it was just another Wednesday.

That’s not to say the power went like that all the time, but when it did, it did, and there was nothing to do but buckle down and deal with it. So they swore, and they bitched, and then they set about feeling around for their lamps, thanking the good Lord above that they’d been on solid ground and not in the water when the damn thing gave up the ghost. And as they puttered around their workstations, searching for their lamps and then the matches they’d need to light those lamps, John heard something.

Well…I guess I should say he _thought_ he heard something. We’ve already established the strange things that happen with sound down that deep in the ground, and the natural cavern they found themselves in, the water they were surrounded by, none of that particularly helped matters. Especially since the noise John heard—or _thought_ he heard—was, in fact, water.

 _Drip. Drip. Drip_.

Nothing special. Nothing out of the ordinary. The stalactites above had a habit of dripping old runoff and melting ice…that reservoir had gathered somehow, after all. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else at play, that he’d caught it for only a second, only a moment, only an _instant_ …and maybe if he waited…if he held his breath…he’d hear it again.

_Drip._

_Drip._

_Drip._

Nothing. Maybe he was starting to develop one of those yellow streaks the foreman was always going on about—turning into a real candyass like the two or three who’d taken the long walk after ol’ Ephraim had gotten scratched up. If he _had_ heard something before, why, it was probably just Eugene knocking over a slug of ore or bumping his fool self against one of the wheelbarrows or—

And then it came again. The dripping was still there, but now it was little more than a quiet metronome marking the seconds between the bizarre sloshing sounds rising up from the water. The noise had a weight to it, a _life_ , and without his sight to muddle the thoughts in his head, John thought he could recognize that sound for what it truly was: bubbles. Bubbles coming up and up and up from the very bottom of that underground lake.

He swallowed hard and lit his lamp, but the water was too far away for him to see much past a ripple. Then two. Then three. Four. They moved from some central point, some mass among the inky well that he simply could not see, and it was only then that he made up his mind to _ask_ Eugene, all thoughts of being a coward erased by the water’s movement.

But before he could get so much as a single word unstuck from the bitter chewing tobacco taste of his tongue, a second lightning-bug glow appeared there in the blackness. It was Eugene who raised his lamp to his face first, and there in the shine of his eyes John could see a similar fear beginning to bloom. “You hear that?” hissed Eugene, speaking as a man might in the parlor room of a funeral home.

John wanted to say he did. He wanted to break some of that awful feeling in his stomach—it was the nightmare feeling, the sort that you get when you wake up in the middle of the night so certain, so _sure_ , that there’s someone or something lurking there in the dark shadows of the corner just out of your line of sight that all you want to do is scream and scream and scream…but find your voice locked tight in your chest. So he raised his own lantern to his face and nodded, and when that odd sloshing sound came again, the two of them turned as one towards the water.

The lanterns, as I’ve already said, weren’t much in terms of light, but the two of them crept closer and closer until the toes of their boots hung over the drop into the reservoir, and slowly they moved their arms towards the source of the sound in hopes of illuminating it just enough to assuage the buds of fear promising to blossom into rancid flowers of horror in their chests…and together, those lanterns provided just enough light.

They could see the thing coming out of the water. And as they stared, they realized it was staring right back, its eyes two pale, unseeing marbles sunk deep into hollow black pits. The two of them must’ve startled, or recoiled, or _something_ , because…ah, it pains me to even say, but the fire lighting their lamps went out just then, you see. _Whoosh_. Then the thing’s eyes winked out, and they were left in the dark again.

Stop for just a second and pull up any of the scary stories you’ve heard recently—hell, the ones you’ve heard _tonight_. How many of them used that word? Dark. Darkness. It sort of tells you all you need to know, doesn’t it? When you say something’s _dark_ , you might mean there’s no light. ‘It’s dark in the basement. The cave is dark.’ But that’s not the only thing it means, is it? ‘That was a dark movie. His sense of humor is dark.’ Almost like we equate that absence of light to an absence of hope, of…of warmth, of _comfort_.

There’s something about the dark that changes us. Don’t you think so? We become different people in the dark. We shed our rationality and our critical thinking like a dusty old snakeskin. It leaves us raw, skittish, worrying our blankets between our fingers as though deep down inside all of us, simply waiting for the moment we turn the lights out, is a five-year-old who never quite grew up.

That probably explains why and how all at once, the spores of ol’ Ephraim Bilkes’s story came back to them. Time had passed and wounds had healed, but they could still remember the things he’d raved about during his time lost in that darkness. The things with long, reaching arms covered in skin gone white and doughy and swollen. There was a _monster_ in that mine, he’d shouted, eyes fever-bright as his blood ran and ran and ran through his fingers, the chopped-liver flesh of his shoulder and neck pulsing in the moonlight as his body fought to cling to its life. There was a _monster_ in that _mine_.

And now…now they were alone with it. In the dark.

***

A gust of wind tore through the circle then, bringing with it the faintest echo of another forest sound. It was impossible to place—maybe it had been a wolf, maybe it had been one of those screaming bobcats, maybe it had been some strange night bird none of them were familiar with, maybe it was any number of things—but placing it wasn’t what was important. As they all had before, the ten of them went perfectly silent and turned towards the trees…but that time, there wasn’t any anxious movie theater laughter to break the tension.

Hannah unconsciously scooted herself a bit closer to Mike. Emily and Jess, fight forgotten, leaned in towards one another.

“…I think maybe we should head in once Josh’s story’s over,” Sam said after the wind died down and the fire calmed from its frenzy. There was a general rumble of agreement, but even so, she found it difficult to pull her eyes away from the…well, the _dark_.

Underneath all the layers of clothes she’d wrapped herself in, Ashley felt her skin stand up in patches of prickly goosebumps. Without meaning to, she shuddered and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, completely unaware that behind her, both Chris and Matt had gone to instinctively set a comforting hand on her back only to end up brushing fingers and immediately pull away again. “I hate to even ask, but like…are we _close?_ ”

Though he’d never admit it (with everyone as riveted by his story as they were, he didn’t think being drawn and quartered would’ve been enough to tear the admission from him), that last sound had driven a real spike of worry through Josh’s gut. He told himself that Sam had been right earlier, that it was probably just a couple of animals doing what animals did when they found themselves in the mood…though he pointedly kept from looking either Beth or Hannah in the eye. Just in case, you understand— _just in case_. The night had been long, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten their earlier conversation.

…or the noise that may or may not have been a gunshot.

“It’s not polite to ask someone how much longer their story’s gonna take, y’know.” He smirked as he said it, licking a spot of marshmallow goo off of his thumb before rubbing the rest of it off on his jacket. “Besides, aren’t mountain lions endangered or whatever? You guys should be thanking me for providing them an aphrodisiac as powerful as the sound of my voi—”

“Yeah, see?” Mike joked, his voice cracking for only a moment as he looked away from the woods. “I _told_ you guys, he’s _totally_ getting off on this shit.”

“If we could maybe stop using the phrase ‘getting off’ as it pertains to _my brother_ , that would really be cool,” Beth interrupted, frowning when she finally caught onto the fact Hannah had scooted closer to Mike and farther from her. She set her head on Sam’s shoulder instead, unsure whether or not it had been meant as slight against Hannah or if Josh’s shit was just _actually_ getting under her skin. She didn’t have to wait too long to find out.

***

They found themselves in that pitch-blackness again, the weight of the dark pressing down on them as though they were the ones in the water. They couldn’t breathe, couldn’t _think_ , so they did the only thing that made sense to them: They ran.

You memorize your house. If you’ve worked there long enough, maybe you memorize your office. The men of the North West mine didn’t have the tunnels memorized, per se, but they knew them well enough to run through the maze in their nightmares, so John and Eugene actually got themselves a fair ways away from the pit by the time the power shuddered back to life. They didn’t stop running though…oh no, those sorry fuckers ran until they couldn’t run anymore, and when they dropped to their knees, lungs burning and eyes rolling in their heads, the other miners could only wonder what in the blue blazes they were trying to say with all their pointing and muttering.

They decided, as they dredged the bloated corpse out of the reservoir later that night, that it must’ve been a drifter that managed to get in somehow. It wasn’t out of the question for someone in their cups to wander into one of the mineshafts and get lost…to wander through those near-identical tunnels until their legs went numb from the cold. Poor fucker must’ve fallen in and drowned, his clothes filling up with that icy water and weighing him down until, by some streak of divinely bad luck, his decomposition had sent him ballooning up to the top that night once the lights had gone out. Almost like he’d been nervous about being seen. Almost like he’d been _shy._

And yes, that explanation was certainly strange, strange things had a habit of happening down there in the North West. But misters Bouchard and Murphy didn’t buy it. No sir, no ma’am, they did not. And while they didn’t end up like Ephraim Bilkes, banging their heads on padded walls up in the Blackwood Sanatorium, they did have one thing in common with the ol’ loon. Namely, they swore up and down that they knew what they’d seen, and what they’d seen down there in the pit hadn’t been any dead drifter. The thing had looked at them. It had moved. It had blinked. And it had _seen them_. They never worked on that goddamn water wheel again. They never worked _the North West_ again. Packed up their shit and left, and on their way out, they made a point to tell each and every one of the others what idiots they were for sticking by, because there was a monster in that mine, and no one seemed to give a single solitary fuck that it was marking them for dead. It had taken two of the men that had gone after Ephraim, hadn’t it? And now it was lurking down in the depths of that well, just waiting for someone to slip up and stick a leg in, or a hand, or to bend over and see what all the bubbles were about.

But the foreman hadn’t been lying before when he said there’d be people happy enough to fill those spots. This was the boom, after all, and times were tough. Families had to eat. There were plenty of souls pleased as punch to fill the holes left by cowards like Ephraim Bilkes and Eugene Bouchard and John Murphy. After all, the mines were overflowing, and those canaries? You guessed it. Right as rain.

All of this brings us to Josiah Warrens—the real star of our show. Don’t get me wrong, the other gentlemen we’ve discussed tonight were real troopers, near and dear to my heart and nearer and dearer to the heart of this very mountain, but they, I’m afraid to say, got off a little too easy for my taste.

Josiah was new blood, someone brought in to fill the space the others had left. Compared to the rest, he was just a kid…maybe only a year or two older than any of us. He was young, sure, but young was good for that kind of work. You didn’t get tired so fast and you could work for longer without aching and—pay attention here, because this is the most important part—you were dumb enough to believe whatever bullshit someone with a couple wrinkles around his eyes fed you. He’d followed the boom as so many other boys his age had, hoping to make some money to help feed his sisters now that both of his parents had gone off to meet their eternal reward.

***

Josh leaned towards Sam for just a moment, pretending to shield his mouth with his hand as he said (much too loud for it to be considered a whisper), “That means they _died_.”

She rolled her eyes and nudged him as hard as she could without shaking Beth from her shoulder. “I know what it _means_ , you dummy,” she groaned, cracking her first uncertain smile since the strange noise coming from the woods.

“Yeah? Just making sure. You looked a little perplexed, there.”

“Could you please—”

***

Point is, he was all doe-eyed and bushy-tailed that first week as he and the rest of the men went down into the depths. This was going to be it—this was how he was going to provide and keep his family together. Maybe he’d even be able to save up enough to leave Alberta and go back home to his sweetie…opportunities abounded.

And then the stories started, as stories always do.

The old-timers were all too happy to fill his head with the shit I’ve filled yours with: Ephraim Bilkes and the screams of the damned dragging two of his would-be rescuers off with clawed hands and hooked fangs, John Murphy and Eugene Bouchard stalked in the darkness by a pale sentinel of Hell, blinking at them with its huge, blank eyes from deep below waters too cold for any man to bear for more than a few minutes at a time…and just as so many others had before him, Josiah began to believe that there was a monster down there in the mine with them.

The spores of that story sunk into the fertile folds of his brain and took root, growing stronger and more verdant with every beat of his heart. Every sound became something waiting to pounce from the dark, every draft from one of the mine’s chimneys was a breath on the back of his neck, every tickle, every cobweb, every errant piece of dust was something brushing against his skin. There were glimmers in the darkness that suggested eyes. And sometimes, if he listened— _really listened_ —the wind tearing through the tunnels sounded more like a scream than anything else.

Oh, there was a monster in the mine all right…there was a monster, but canaries can’t warn you against monsters any more than they can warn you against stories. All they know is poison gas, and there sure as shit wasn’t any of _that_.

He’d been working the North West for about a month when it happened. It had been a normal day—perfectly routine. The men had gathered up their tools, checked their maps, and then they’d headed down into the belly of the beast as they’d done every day of every week of every month of the past however many years, and that had been that. They crept farther and farther down, farther and farther from the light and warmth of the sun, farther and farther from the last fresh air they’d know for a good, long while, and not a one of them had any idea that each step they took brought them that much closer to their death.

Save for the sounds of picks and drills, they were silent as they worked. Sound carries strangely in mines, as we’ve established, and on that particular day, none of them were quite interested in hearing how their voices might stretch and morph and turn monstrous as milk turns to clots. Part of that was simple superstition. Part of it was the fact the foreman had decided to cart his doughy ass down into the depths with them that day—their numbers had been stagnating, you see, and profit dips are one of the fastest, if not _only_ , ways to get the higher-ups interested in what your working conditions are _actually_ like. Either way, it was quiet, you understand. It was _so_ quiet. So they _should’ve_ heard it coming.

But they didn’t.

Metal hitting rock, rock hitting rock, that’s how it went all the live-long day: Metal hitting rock, rock hitting rock, metal hitting rock, rock hitting rock, rock hitting rock…rock hitting…rock hitting rock hitting rock hitting rock— _fuck!_

By the time they realized something was wrong, it was already too late. The mountain itself heaved beneath them like it was preparing to vomit them out, a malignant infection eating away at its guts, and then they were falling end-over-end, ass-over-teakettle, tumbling, tumbling, _tumbling_ down into the center of the earth.

Josiah, our strapping young man, he hit his head something wicked against the ground, or the ceiling, or a wall…he couldn’t tell. For a minute there, he saw nothing but stars. Was he out for a second? A minute? A day? Who’s to say. What matters is that when he felt himself return to his body and he was able to open his eyes, what he saw right in front of him, only inches from his face, was impossible. Unthinkable.

He couldn’t tell who the man was, all considering. Not when all he could see was the lower half of his body, his legs kicking and spasming and drumming against the ground like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. It didn’t make sense why he couldn’t tell who he was looking at…he couldn’t figure out why his brain just wasn’t putting it together, but then it clicked. He couldn’t tell because there was nothing to see _but_ those legs; starting right below the place where he’d imagine a belt buckle to be, there was only rock. And rock. And rock. The legs seemed to be coming _out_ of them like some terrible and undiscovered form of fungus, a fleshy mushroom growing in the dark.

Then his head cleared enough for him to understand that the ambient buzz he’d been hearing at the very back of his mind was screaming. Someone was screaming.

It wasn’t until someone slapped him hard across the face that he realized it’d been _him_ all along.

Well that woke him up. That woke him up right quick. And all at once the world snapped into crystal focus, every edge sharp and defined, colors bright and clear despite the graininess of the lantern light, the air heavy with the smell of salt and metal and stagnant water and something…something…something _else_. Something he wasn’t ready to face yet.

Soon! Soon. Soon he wouldn’t have a choice _but_ to face it, but that time had not yet come. No, not yet. Not just yet.

The lamps that’d survived the fall weren’t much but they were better than nothing. For the first time since entering the North West mine, he found himself _wishing_ for nothing, for that same blissful blackness Johnny Boy and Geney Boy had found themselves in none too long ago. That nothing would’ve been safer. That nothing would’ve been _kinder_.

They’d never know what did it: A natural fault in the land, a rusted support, just plain bad luck…only God knew that, and He wasn’t take questions at that time. The cave they’d been working out of had closed like a wound will sometimes do, collapsing in on itself to shut out the spaces that hurt the worst. Hundreds— _thousands_ —of pounds of cold hard earth had fallen around and onto them, and in that glow that was better than nothing but _worse_ than nothing too, Josiah could see that there were those who the earth had fallen _into_ and _through_ as well. Men lay on the ground with their heads smashed into unnatural shapes, eyes popped out and dangling over pale cheeks, their bodies torn open and apart and strewn across the cavern.

The rockslide had caught them unawares. There had been no _warning_ , no sign, no sweet little birdies dropping dead out of terror, nothing to suggest that the worst was happening and death was imminent, but as he looked around, he saw he was surrounded by it. Soaked by it. Covered in it.

The legs in front of him finally stopped twitching.

He started screaming again.

Didn’t I promise? Didn’t I tell you? The canaries were fucking fine! But the men. Were. _Not!_

***

Josh’s voice rang out like a thunderclap in the night, causing more than one of them to flinch. Beneath his jacket and vest, his chest rose and fell in fitful breaths, gradually evening out as the mountain echoed back the sentiment.

_The men were not!...ere not!...ot!...!_

And then, riding on the wind as words sometimes rode on a sigh, one last echo boomeranged back around them, impossibly clear and horrifically sharp against the crackling of the fire: _THE MEN WERE NOT!_

That last one had sounded so close, so _crisp_ , that Beth, Sam, and Hannah actually turned, trying to decide whether the others were playing some kind of joke. There wasn’t anyone looming behind them, but with the memory of the shape she’d seen outside the lodge still fresh, Beth reached around behind Sam and gave Josh a shove just for good measure.

To his other side, Ashley and Chris exchanged a brief look, both remembering the way Jess’s voice had carried on the breeze when they’d been in the lodge; the way it had carried just like that. Chris shoved Josh just the same as Beth had.

But Josh just grinned and slipped back into the story as one might slip into a well-worn sweater, reveling in the way it fit around him.

***

No, the men were _not_ fine. They were anything but.

There’d been thirty of them that morning, thirty men, alive and well, hale and hearty, and now? Now there were twenty. Twenty who, by the grace of some god or God, capital-G or otherwise, had managed to escape having their skulls cracked open or their necks snapped or their chests crushed or their backs broken. Twenty men closed into a cavern like fireflies in a jar, only there hadn’t been a being benevolent enough to poke holes in the lid or clean the floor of their dead brethren. Twenty men in the dark with ten corpses sharing the space.

Paranoia set in faster than you might think.

Their worries, at first, were for the air. There were no chimneys to let in a fresh flow, and they had found themselves in what equated to a tomb, an invisible ticker counting down the minutes until someone breathed the last breath available to them. Those worries quickly turned to other things: water, for one, monsters, for another…but the foreman had come along on this journey, remember? The big boss. In a few hours, _someone_ was liable to notice him and the others missing…and then rescue would come.

Only it didn’t.

Not that night.

Not the next.

Not that they knew whether it was night or day down there. Not that they had any sense of time passing at all…except, of course, for the rumbling of their stomachs.

You probably see where this is headed now that I’ve said that. You see where it’s going, or at least you _think_ you do, and that’s fine, that’s fine…but before we get any further along, let me ask you this. Do you know what killed the Donners? The ones who didn’t die of freezing, the ones who didn’t fall at the hands of their friends?

When the human body begins to starve, a few things happen. The hunger pangs come first, and we’ve all been there, haven’t we? You miss a meal, maybe two, and your stomach ties itself in knots. You feel sick, nauseous, it’s hard to think, hard to move, and you get _angry_. Those hunger pangs are _temporary_ , though, did you know that? Temporary. After forty-eight, maybe seventy-two hours, that discomfort goes away. You don’t feel _normal_ , but you feel better than you did when your stomach was louder than your voice. But then, if you’re lucky enough to find something to eat, they come right back. Big, angry cramps in your gut, reminding you how hungry you are, how very _fucking hungry_ you are…taste something, _smell_ something, and your body wakes up and kicks into maximum overdrive. You need to eat more, more, _more_ to replace the nutrients you’ve lost. Your blood doesn’t know how to handle it.

It’s called refeeding syndrome, and it can kill you just as dead as starvation, as more than one Donner—and more than one of our dear miners—quickly found out.

They ate their fallen brethren, yes, when more than a week had passed and they realized it was the only choice they had, and they choked down and sicked up that grey, rancid meat. They swallowed it raw and cracked into the long bones to suck out what marrow they could, making sure to turn away the faces of the dead, the faces of their _friends_ , before they sank their teeth into them. Some, like Josiah, were wise enough to go slow, to only eat a little, to ration. Well…‘wise enough’ is being generous, I guess. Some of them were simply too weak to fight the others, the bigger ones, the hungrier ones…some only got to pick at what was left after men like the foreman took the lion’s share of the dead. For most of them, that was enough, and they survived. But for some…those who’d gorged themselves like mosquitoes until they were fit to burst…they died anyway, victims of refeeding, their bellies full of wasted, rotting flesh.

We’ve learned tonight that sound carries strangely in mines. We’ve _also_ learned that the dark does something to us, changes us in some fundamental way. In the dark, the moaning of the dying became Ephraim Bilkes’s screams from perdition. In the dark, the starved hollows in the men’s faces became the bottomless black eyes that stared at Eugene Bouchard and John Murphy from the reservoir’s pit. In the dark, the sharp angles of the dead became the reaching claws of unseen beasts. And all the while, paranoia flourished in the fetid folds of their minds, sprouting spores and spreading in the blackness like fungus in the damp.

There was a monster in the mine. Maybe more than one. Maybe _many_. But that monster? That monster didn’t matter. Because they were running out of time, they were running out of air, they were running out of _food_ …and that monster might’ve actually been a blessing, an end quicker than the slow spiral of starvation was promising to be.

They had put it off for as long as they could, had managed by sucking on the scraps of bone and praying it could keep them alive for another day, but when another night, another two nights, another three, came and went without any sign of rescue, the men grew restless and cagey and their hunger became impossible to ignore. They had to eat. They _needed_ to eat.

But there was a problem that time around.

***

Josh dropped his eyes from them momentarily, and even so, could feel the weight of _theirs_ on him. Good. “Any guesses?” he asked, trying not to revel _too_ obviously in their captivation as he finished what was left of his beer. “What could the problem have been?” Then he _did_ look to them again, popping his eyebrows up and down from over the neck of his bottle.

He’d expected Ashley to be the one to answer…maybe Sam. Ash, of course, had to be right twenty-four-seven, and Sam just liked to be helpful, but as it turned out, neither of them spoke up.

“No one…no one was dead,” Matt said slowly, almost apprehensively. He’d given up on toasting himself any more marshmallows, Josh noted. “They’d already eaten the ones who’d been killed in the cave-in and the ones who died after, so…” He glanced to the others for confirmation, but no one seemed to want to meet his eyes just then. “So they were all alive.”

Beaming like the star of a toothpaste commercial, Josh tipped his empty bottle Matt’s way. “Bravo! They were all alive. Every. Last. One. Which raises a question in and of itself, doesn’t it?” He tossed the bottle over his shoulder with a flick of his wrist and then leaned towards the fire again, setting his hands on his knees. As he settled back into position, he felt the story rush up around him like the jets of a Jacuzzi, welcoming and warm and maybe just a little dizzying. “What’s a man to do? What’s…a man…to do?”

***

They drew lots, is what they did. The foreman tore one of the dead men’s work shirts into ribbons. Held them in his hand. One by one, the remaining sixteen took turns pinching pieces of that putrid fabric between their fingers to pull a strip out of his fist. One by one, they unfurled them to measure their length. And one by one, as they saw the lots they’d drawn, they turned their eyes to the next man, and the next, and the next.

The youngest of their number, Josiah was the last to draw. And seeing as how there were only two strips left and no one had drawn the short one yet…I don’t think it can be stated strongly enough, the sort of visceral fear turning his bowels to water. He felt the weight of the others’ eyes on him, sizing him up like a side of beef at the butcher’s. Their hunger and their desperation had sapped the humanity from them and now he found himself shaking as he imagined he might if facing down a pack of hungry dogs.

He knew they were all thinking about it—how they’d do it. Maybe they’d grab him, hold him down. That’d probably be the easiest way to go about it. He was so tired and weak…it wouldn’t take but two or three of the bigger ones to keep him still. They’d take a pickaxe, maybe a rock with a sharp enough edge. Would they bash his face in first? Blind him? Or would they just lop his head off and catch the blood with their hands? It wasn’t just him— _everyone_ was so tired and weak…it would probably take them more than one good stroke to do the damn thing.

Would he feel it?

Would they wait to be sure he was dead?

Would they wait until he was cold? Or would their hunger set them upon him while he was still warm enough to feel their teeth break his skin?

He drew his lot with fingers numb from the cold but trembling nonetheless. The fabric was coarse and oily and gritty with soot as he took it in his hand.

He unwound it.

And it matched the length of the strips in the others’ hands.

Their eyes slid off of him as though he were coated in grease, and they instead turned their slavering hunger towards the foreman, who was, interestingly enough, refusing to unclench his fist to measure the strip of fabric that remained. It had been his idea, drawing lots…but oh, by the sounds of it, the foreman was having second thoughts about the whole enterprise. _Third_ thoughts, perhaps. Fourth.

Josiah, helpful as he was hungry, relieved as he was resolute, suggested to the other miners that it wouldn’t take but two or three of their biggest to hold the man down.

It didn’t.

His guess had been that it would take more than a few strokes to remove his head, given the weakness of their muscles and the waning of their strength.

It didn’t.

He’d wondered whether his fellows would wait until he’d gone cold to tear into him.

They didn’t.

And to be fair, neither did _he_.

See, here’s the thing. He’d already had his come to Jesus moment, his watershed instant of understanding: Yes, he’d eat another person if it meant keeping himself alive another day to see his sweet sisters, and yes, that apparently extended even to the men he’d counted as his friends. But what he’d realized just then as he’d felt their watery, sick, starving eyes on him, was that _they’d_ all realized it too. They’d eat him just as he’d eat them. _Happily_. And oh, they’d mourn him, sure, just like they’d mourn the others if they ever got to see the light of day again, but down there? Down there in the dark, they were _all_ dead men—some of them were just hungrier than the others.

Much hungrier.

He’d made up his mind he wasn’t going to starve. He wasn’t. Going. To. Starve. So he ate. And he ate. And he ate. And soon there wasn’t anything left of the foreman _to_ eat.

No one sicked it back up that time. Strange, huh? Even knowing what it was, _who_ it was, knowing it was raw, feeling it slide down their throats in that wet, mucousy way uncooked meat has…not a one of them so much as gagged. For one more night, they were full. For one more night, they were _men_.

It had been one thing when they’d picked the bones of the ones who’d died in the cave-in or those who’d made themselves sick from eating too much too quickly. That had been ghoulish, to be sure, but their crime had been _scavenging_ , then. They’d been vultures feasting on carrion before the worms could get to it. Now? Now they were murderers, butchers, _things_. In their fervor to save their own lives, they hadn’t just sinned, hadn’t just trespassed against their fellow man…they’d carried out an affront of _God_. There would be, _could be_ , no saving them. Even if there was a rescue team coming—and there was no reason to keep holding out hope that there was—they couldn’t be saved.

They were damned. And they knew it.

As he sat there in the dark, breathing in the hot stink of the other men, those dead and those alive and those in the gauzy space between the two, Josiah again felt eyes on him. Not _just_ him, not like before; they were all looking at each other, following the lines of their silhouettes in the murky stillness of the mine, watching, waiting for any sudden movements.

Canaries can’t sniff out superstition or stories or fear of the dark, I told you. Well, turns out they’re no great shakes at sensing paranoia, either. Not that it mattered. No canaries down there anyway, right? Lucky them. I promised you they’d be fine, didn’t I? And so they were.

But the men weren’t. They never would be again.

When rescue finally came a week later—boy did they take their sweet time— _twelve_ were still alive enough to be lifted from the mine. Josiah was one of them. How lucky for him. How very fucking lucky.

The things they pulled out of that shaft only resembled men in the vaguest of senses. The dark had changed them, you see. Changed their minds, changed their bodies…one by one they were brought back into the light of day, fish-belly flesh pale to the point of translucence, clinging fast to thin, narrow bones. Blank, sunblind eyes rolled in sunken black pits of skulls, seeming somehow too large for their emaciated bodies. Their backs hunched against the weight of the mountain, their mouths crusted over with old blood, their vocal cords frozen taut to turn every whisper into a scream of agony.

The medics and men who brought them up out of the earth found it hard to look at them…and harder still to look away. And as they went to bed that night, tucked in safe and warm, never having known the freezing cold embrace of the mine, they prayed as hard and as loud as they could that they’d never have to go anywhere near that fucking place again, so long as they lived, forever and ever amen. Because there were monsters in the North West mine. Monsters that had once been men.

And they were so goddamn hungry.

***

The pause that followed seemed to last forever. Wind rustled the eponymous pines, the fire snapped and crackled as it shrank further into embers, but that was it. Not a creature was stirring, as the old rhyme went, and that included their merry band of misfits. The ones who’d been brave enough to try eating again after Beth’s story had cast the remnants of their s’mores into the snow with obvious finality, thermoses set on the ground for their contents to grow cold.

It was only after a lifetime that Chris cleared his throat, leaning in towards Josh to ask, “But uh…the canaries? Were they—”

Suddenly all levity again, Josh nodded spiritedly. “Oh, yeah, yeah don’t worry man, they were fine.”

“Oh, _phew!_ Thank God.”

“Right?”

With a grunt of effort, Mike stood up from the bench, brushing a bit of snow from his jeans before he set about picking up his trash. “Yeah, uh huh, well, if I might have the honor of being the first person to say something about all that?” He paused for effect, then pointed to Josh and Beth one after the other. “You? And _you?_ Should probably go talk to professionals.”

“Fair.”

“Hey, whoa, my first story was totally legit, it’s _Josh’s_ fault that I had to—”

“Why do I get this feeling that where most of us have a gene pool, you guys just have a vat of fake blood that you crawl out of when you’re born? Is that what it is?” He seemed not to notice the way Hannah retreated that much further into herself, pulling her knees towards her chest as he said it. “You guys are twisted,” Mike continued, “ _Twisted!_ ”

“Okay,” Emily sighed, taking her cue from Mike to stand as well. “This has been…a night. But now if you don’t mind, I’d just _really_ like to get inside where it’s warm and—”

“ _Oooh_ …is somebody _scared?_ ” Jess teased, grinning up until the moment Emily brushed a layer of snow off of her own jacket and onto her lap instead. “You— _hey!_ ”

Ever the rule-abiding citizen, Ashley leaned over Chris (thereby very nearly giving him a heart attack from proximity alone), lowering her voice as though sharing a secret with Josh. “Do you really want to press your luck asking them to vote? Because like, I think we’ve reached a boiling point here.”

He snorted a laugh before flinging what few pine needles were left into the fire, brushing his hands off on his pants afterwards. “Yeah, no. I don’t need these peons to voice their appreciation. As the _leader_ of the Midnight Society, it’s just sort of understood that _my_ story’s a shoo-in, so…”

“Well _I_ would’ve voted for you. Just for what it’s worth,” Sam said as she joined their impromptu huddle.

“Ah, thank you Sammy. A woman of taste!”

“Would’ve been a no from me, just FYI.” A groan, a stretch, and then Beth was up too, rolling her head on her shoulders to work out the tension that had collected in her neck. “Why is it _always_ cannibalism with you, you absolute freak of nature?”

“Hey, Hannah’s had a cannibal too,” Chris was quick to point out. “Honestly, I think Mike might’ve been onto something…I think you guys have some kind of weird kink in your DNA where you just _crave_ human flesh.”

“You’re a moron.”

“Words can hurt, Beth Beth. They can cut like knives. Or, y’know…forks.”

“Hartley, I swear to God—”

As the others began ( _quickly_ ) making their way from the fire towards the lodge, Josh couldn’t help but sigh. All that work he’d put into the night, and none of them had come away with _any_ respect for his showmanship. Disappointing. They couldn’t even hang around to bask in the _ceremony_ of it all. One comment? _One comment_ about him being twisted was all he got for that beast of a story? What a load of horseshit. Maybe waiting to go last _hadn’t_ been the brightest idea. Lesson fucking learned. “Yeah, this is a lot of big talk coming from Body Horror Barbie over here…”

“Again. Wouldn’t have had to resort to that if _you_ hadn’t _made_ me, so—”

“Han,” he said before she could scurry after the others. “I don’t know where _you_ think you’re going.”

The dying light of the fire caught on the lenses of Hannah’s glasses, sending two brilliant orange flashes through the air as she glanced over her shoulder towards Emily and Jess and Matt and Mike trundling away through the snow before looking back to him. “I’m going inside. Like everyone else.”

“No you’re not.”

“Josh.”

He ushered Ashley and Chris away with a wave of his hand and a roll of his eyes, less than surprised when the two of them _immediately_ scampered off to catch up with the rest of the crew. “As the joint owners of Mount Washington, it’s _our_ responsibility to prevent forest fires. After all that bear talk earlier, you really wanna give Smokey a reason to come track us down with that mean-looking shovel of his?”

Sam couldn’t help but laugh as she found herself on the receiving end of not one but _two_ exasperated looks, both twins asking with their eyes if she saw what they were dealing with. “You guys want some help with that?” she asked. “I mean, it looks like it’s burning out already so I don’t think it’ll be hard, but…”

“No,” Hannah muttered, her mouth pulled down into a frown that bordered on petulance. “Go get warm… _one of us_ should be, at least…”

“Oookay,” she laughed, glancing between the three of them before doing exactly that, her boots crunching softly in the snow as she headed for the glow of the lodge’s windows.

“Now, why’d you go and send away the _one_ person we know could actually _do_ this shit, huh?”

Still looking more than a little down in the dumps, Hannah kicked another pile of snow onto the fire, her hands shoved deep into her pockets. “What, so you could just stare at her butt the whole time? Please. Tonight’s been exhausting enough as it is…”

Josh rolled his eyes, “Oh get over yourself—you had a _blast!_ ”

“Did not.”

“You _so_ did.”

“Did _not._ ”

Beth, to her credit, waited until she’d piled a fair amount of snow onto the fire herself before she added her two cents. “…pretty sure you did.”

“ _Ha!_ ” Josh grinned once it seemed the fire had been sufficiently extinguished, stretching his arms out in a wide yawn before jokingly grabbing both of them around the shoulders to pull them close against his sides. “Whaddya think, team? We put this one in the win column? Another successful night for the books?”

“If that’s what you want to call it,” Beth drawled, trying (and failing) to get out of his grasp before giving into the hug. She covered up the moment of sisterly affection by promptly reaching up and tugging Josh’s beanie off his head, leaving his hair to stand up in static-charged cowlicks. “But you do realize that in your _desperate_ need to constantly be seen as the creepy film major, you’ve absolutely dragged us down into the pits of social alienation with you, right?”

Josh thought it over for a second…then nodded. “I ran the numbers on that one, yeah. Decided it was a risk worth taking.”

“I’m so glad,” Hannah said flatly, cringing and trying to weakly push herself away as Josh planted an obnoxiously theatrical kiss first to her temple, then Beth’s. “Eugh.”

The three of them headed back towards the lodge like that, Josh’s arms draped over his sisters’ shoulders, the twins taking turns nudging him away, joking and snickering about which of their idiot friends would wind up stuck in the antler room and who would end up chickenshit enough to need to double up with someone after all those stories. As the snow crunched under their feet and the warm light of the lodge grew ever closer, they congratulated themselves on getting through the night without any fistfights or duels to the death and laughed at how ridiculously shaken up they’d been about that first branch snapping all those hours ago. And as they stomped the snow off their boots and stepped inside, all they could think of was changing into pjs and sleeping until noon.

Hannah closed the door behind her once Josh and Beth had kicked out of their boots, and as she locked it, she thought…huh. For just a split-second, she thought she saw a glimmer from out in the woods. She frowned, cupping her hands against the door’s glass pane to cut back on the reflection, and…

“Everything okay there, Han? See another big, bad raccoon?”

“Ha ha,” she muttered, double-checking the lock before pushing herself away from the door to join everyone else. “Nah, it’s nothing. Thought maybe I saw the fire still going there for a sec, but…” She shrugged. “Must’ve just been my imagination.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Hey Queenie?"
> 
> Uh huh?
> 
> "Everyone's told a story now."
> 
> Yeah! Yeah they have!
> 
> "So, um..."
> 
> ?
> 
> "Why does this say there are still two chapters left?"
> 
> :)


	16. The Not-Quite-Midnight Society... +1

Yes, the lodge was full of bedrooms. Yes, those bedrooms were full of, uh…beds. Yes, beds would’ve been _way_ more comfortable to sleep on than, say, the great room’s floor. Be that as it may, that was precisely where everyone had ended up: the floor of the great room. That was where they’d fallen asleep. All of them. Every. Last. One.

It had been _convenient_ , okay? That was all! It was convenient and maybe even a little nostalgic! Yeah…yeah! Sleeping there in the great room—those who hadn’t been lucky enough to win a spot on the couch by nose-goes sprawled out on the floor wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags—felt like a slumber party straight out of childhood. It was cute, and it was fun, and it had absolutely _nothing_ to do with the weird sounds coming from the woods or the creaking of the lodge or the scary stories they’d been telling each other all night.

Absolutely.

Fucking.

Nothing.

They weren’t freaked out! Are you kidding? No way! That would’ve been…well, that would’ve been stupid. And embarrassing. And _juvenile!_ So yeah, the Midnight Society slept in the great room of Blackwood’s luxurious lodge because it felt like a slumber party and _not_ because any of them were scared. And that story might’ve even held up in court…had Emily not woken them all up screaming.

“JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST!”

“ _Huhwha?!_ ”

“What’s wr— _ow!_ What’s wrong?!”

“Shut the fuck up, oh my God!”

“ _Buh?_ ”

It was impossible to tell who said what as everyone startled awake, Jess falling off of the sectional with a dull thud, Hannah sitting bolt upright as though she’d been electrocuted, accidental (and not-so-accidental) spooners springing apart from each other on the floor…the only thing that _could_ be said for certain was that not a single one of them seemed particularly jazzed to have been awoken so suddenly.

“— _outside!_ ” Emily was saying, her hands pale knots clutching at her pajama top, her eyes wide enough to show more whites than should’ve been possible. “ _There was someone outside!_ ”

Those of them who were awake enough to understand what she’d said broke into confused murmurs at that, someone taking it upon themselves to click one of the light switches on so they could get a better look at the place.

“Em…” Mike began, fighting off a monstrous yawn as he comfortingly set his hands on her shoulders, “We’re in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere. There’s no one out th—”

“ _I KNOW WHAT I SAW, MICHAEL!_ ” she shouted, jerking herself out of his grasp. She turned to the rest of them, her eyes searching, appraising, and when they landed on Matt she tried again. “I saw a _guy_ out there!” Emily insisted, pointing frantically towards the side door beyond the stairs. “I got up to get some water and _right there_ , standing _just on the other side of that door,_ there was this…this…this _guy_ , and—”

Near the very back of the room, Chris muttered, “Probably a yeti. I hear this is their mating season,” _just_ loud enough to be heard.

Unfortunately.

The ripple of groggy laughter the joke got was short-lived, and really, even _that_ was being kind; it shriveled and died the moment Emily turned her eyes on him. The temperature of the lodge seemed to drop a solid ten degrees. “This isn’t _funny_ , you—”

That time it was Sam who stepped forward. She didn’t put her hands on Emily as Mike had, but instead stood beside her, keeping her expression placid and understanding. “Em, hey…hey. Look, I have no doubt you thought you saw something—”

Emily bristled, her shoulders pulling inward. It seemed less like a defensive move and more like she was trying to pull in another breath deep enough to fuel her shouting. “I don’t _think_ I saw anything! I _did_ see someone!”

Sam raised both of her hands in a clear show of apology. “Okay, you saw someone.” She offered a quick glare to the others in her line of sight almost as though daring them to make any comment about it. “You saw someone. But look…” Not nearly awake enough for any of this, she put on an exhausted (and not terribly convincing) smile, gently nudging Emily to look towards the door again. “See? It’s so dark outside that all you can see is—”

“Our reflections!” Matt let out a soft, relieved laugh as he joined the girls, peering past the staircase.

The effect _was_ fairly eerie: Against the pitch-blackness of the night outside, the glass door acted as something of a mirror, making their darkened silhouettes look like the world’s spookiest door-to-door salespeople. Just to check, Matt waved one of his hands cheerfully, another laugh escaping him when the ghostly blob of his reflection waved back.

“Aw man, that’s gotta be it! I bet you just saw it real fast too—out of the corner of your eye, probably! And since it’s so far away, it just looked—”

With a furious noise, Emily pushed herself away from them as she’d pushed herself away from Mike, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “You assholes aren’t LISTENING TO ME!”

“ _Au contraire_ ,” Josh said flatly, his eyes still half-lidded and puffy as he rubbed at his face. “Listening to you is an inescapable, physiological, matter of _fact_ right now. Swear to Christ…” He lowered his voice so only those closest to him (Ashley and Chris, no surprises there) could hear, “Got a voice like a goddamn tornado siren.”

“I would’ve gone with fire alarm, but hey, to each their own,” Ashley said from the very corner of her mouth.

“C’mon,” Sam pleaded, holding a hand out to her. “It was a long night, and I think all those dumb campfire stories got to us. _All_ of us! It’s okay you were scared.”

“Yeah!” Hannah wasn’t able to stifle the yawn that came next, but when it finally ended she added, “I mean…I got pretty freaked. If _I’d_ seen _my_ shadow on my way to the bathroom, I probably would’ve—”

“I DIDN’T SEE MY…” she cut herself off mid-sentence, her voice giving way to a frustrated growl. With jerky movements, she waved at Jess, snapping, “Turn the lights off!”

“Um…do it yourself?” Jess responded, sharing a look with Beth that _clearly_ managed to communicate ‘Can you believe this?’ without needing a single word.

Ah, but it seemed she had a point to make. There would be no letting it go. “Someone. Turn off. The fucking. Lights.”

For a beat, there was nothing. No one moved. No one moved a fucking muscle. Then, slowly, almost _tentatively_ , Hannah eased herself up from the floor and crossed the room to the light switch, clicking it off and sending them into darkness again.

“See?” Emily said, gesturing to the door, “See?! When the lights are off, you _can’t_ see our reflections! You just see what’s…” her voice slowly trailed off, becoming smaller, weaker, more confused. “…outside.”

There was not a man outside the door—that much was immediately obvious. While it _was_ true that they could no longer see their own shadows moving across the glass but were instead given a perfect view of the picnic table and the trees beyond, so too was it true that there was absolutely no man that they could see.

There was, however, _something_.

A hush fell over those of them close enough to the stairs to see the thing outside of the door—a fact that only served to further agitate those farther away.

“What?” Beth asked, sounding more put out than anything else. “What is it?”

“Yeti? Is it a yeti? Does he have an amorous look in his eye?”

“Chris. Shush.” Ashley cleared her throat quietly, making no attempt to improve her view of the door (if anything, she subtly tucked herself further behind Chris and Josh). “Is someone out there?”

The tallest of the front-group, Mike and Matt looked at one another from over Sam and Emily’s heads. Neither appeared especially excited. See, both of them knew how _this_ particular story would go, no pine needles crackling in a fire necessary. It was a tale as old as time: Between Mr. Class Prez and Mr. Football Hero, _one of them_ was going to be expected to lead the charge on this one. _One of them_ was going to have to go outside and see what that thing was. _One of them_.

…unless…

“Hey Sam, you’re pretty spritely on your feet, huh?”

She turned to him slowly, her eyes narrowed as her mouth pulled itself into a line. “‘Spritely.’ Really, Mike? _Really?_ ”

“Look. All I’m sayin’ is that I’m not all that graceful—I’m a big enough guy to admit my reflexes are less than catlike at this point in my life—and I’ll hand it to Matt that he’s def the dude you want in your corner if someone needs to be tackled, but—”

Sam didn’t wait for him to finish. Instead she sighed, walking across the room and towards the door, charging on ahead despite the twins’ combined “ _Sam!_ ”s. They sounded something like a Greek chorus warning of impending tragedy, but even their echoes didn’t stop her.

“Wooow…” Jess said, “You two big, strong brutes are really gonna let the five-foot nothing fairy princess check that out?”

“Excuse you, _Jessica_ ,” Mike drawled, his tone joking but _way_ too tense to come across as genuine. “We are a _very_ progressive group here, okay? I’ll have you know I’m probably the biggest feminist in this room. If Sam feels empowered enough to…” Whatever verbal diarrhea he’d had seemed to dry up—and not a moment too soon—as Sam pulled the sliding door open.

As they watched, she glanced around outside…then grabbed the thing they’d seen on the door, yanking it free before hopping back into the safety of the lodge. After closing the locking the door, she gave one last cautious glance around, only hurrying over to them once she’d reassured herself no one was lurking nearby. “Um…” she began, the tight line of her mouth turning downwards into a frown as she unfolded the paper that had been wedged into the door’s pane, “This is…uh…”

Emily didn’t wait. “See?!” She snatched the paper out of Sam’s hands, but it was very quickly made obvious no one would be reading anything like that. After all, the only illumination they were working with was the cold blue cast of the night sky reflecting off of the snow and spilling through the slats of the blinds. Not exactly prime lighting conditions. “Hannah!”

She didn’t wait for Emily to repeat herself. Hannah turned the lights back on, wincing apologetically when a few of the others grumbled at the sudden brightness.

“It was, uh…” Sam said, appearing perfectly perplexed as she watched Emily read, “It was shoved between the door’s frame and the glass, but…”

For one blessed second, maybe a little longer, Emily was silent. Her eyes scanned the paper with laser-like acuity, bouncing from one line to the next without so much as a pause. Then, baffling them all, she looked up and asked Mike, “What the hell is a ‘ _teenybopper?_ ’”

He grabbed the paper from her and was fairly unsettled (not that he’d ever admit as much) to find she offered no resistance. She just…let him take it. “Pardon? Teeny…what the…” His eyes didn’t move half as fast as hers had, but that didn’t seem to matter; it only took a few sentences for him to figure out what was going on. Whirling around, he fixed Josh with a look the others recognized as the horrendous glare that preceded most cafeteria brawls. “Oh ha ha. Real funny, jackass.”

Josh blinked once, his expression unchanging. He glanced to Chris (who shrugged), then to Ashley (who also shrugged), and finally to his sisters (who didn’t seem to need an excuse to level their own glares his way). “Guess I missed the joke this time around.”

“The whole scaring people thing? It’s stale. It’s like four in the fucking ay-em, my guy, so if you could maybe cut back on being a _fuckwit_ so we could _sleep_ , that would just be _peachy_.”

It could not be stated strongly enough how very, very unamused Josh appeared in that moment. “Stale, huh?” he asked after a beat. “Me scaring people’s stale. I don’t seem to remember you making any sorta comment earlier about me scaring you—kinda just remember everyone filing in here for naptime once I finished, so maybe—”

“Oh fuck off! This has your slimy fingerprints all over it. Just fucking fess up so we can move on, would you?”

That time, he couldn’t help but snort. “I’m sorry…are you saying you think I somehow managed to…what, exactly? Run outside, scare Regina George over there out of her Gucci footie pajamas, and then silently—and I can’t stress that one enough, _silently_ —creep back into my shitty little cocoon without waking anyone else up?” His head cocked to the side that held none of the hospitality he’d shown while they were all sitting around the campfire. Clichéd or not, Josh wasn’t someone to be messed with before a full pot of coffee. Or three. “Honestly I’m _flattered_ you think I’m willing to commit to the bit _that fully_ , but—”

Mike was across the room in all of five strides. He shoved the paper into Josh’s chest with enough force to send him stumbling back a step. “Then _you_ fucking explain this!”

The glare had spoken of a cafeteria fight. The push, though? The push filled the room with the anticipatory silence that stole across that same cafeteria when the first teacher poked their head in. _Someone_ was about to get in trouble.

 _Who_ , though…well, that remained to be seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! As always, I hope you're staying safe and hanging in there, wherever you are! <3 And if you're like me, dealing with a lot of snow and a lot of ice, I hope you're also staying warm!!
> 
> Only one more chapter of this bad boy, and I hope you'll enjoy it ;)


	17. The +1’s Story: The Tale of the Ten Little Teenyboppers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant tags for this chapter: Blood and gore

After standing there for what felt like an eternity, Josh took the paper Mike had smashed into his chest. He held his gaze for another beat as he smoothed it out, taking his sweet time as though to emphasize how very little he thought of the whole situation. It was only when his curiosity overpowered his insult that he finally dropped his eyes and began to read.

“Like ha ha, okay, it’s _reeeal_ funny to go around scaring the _girls_ in the middle of the—” Something about Josh’s face made Mike stop cold. He wasn’t sure he could say _what_ it was, but…it was _something_ , all right.

“I know you’re not going to believe me on this one, dreamboat…” Josh said slowly, his posture going rigid as his eyes moved across the crumpled page, “But uh…I didn’t write this.”

Perfect. Fucking. Silence. Silence from Emily, from Mike, from the peanut gallery, from the lodge itself, from the pines outside.

Then, from her perch on the arm of the sectional, Jess asked, “Uh…o…kay? Is anyone gonna tell the rest of us what the hell’s going on, or…?”

Brow furrowing, unfurrowing, and then furrowing again, Josh started to read aloud in a flat, atonal drone. Once he started, it didn’t take too long for them to believe what he’d told Mike: Whoever had written the note left outside the door…it hadn’t been him.

It hadn’t been _any of them_.

***

Once upon a time, there were ten little teenyboppers who sat themselves around a big ol’ fire, thinking it would keep them safe from the things that go bump in the night. What a happy accident that was. They were right! That fire of theirs was the best & ONLY good idea they’d have all night. As long as they stayed by that fire, they’d be just fine.

Too bad for them that they were all gotdamn idiots.

***

“…did you just say ‘ _got_ damn?’ Like…with a t?” Ashley asked, foregoing her usual avoidance of profanity if only because she wasn’t entirely sure that one _counted_.

“S’what the paper says, Ash…” Josh’s mouth had pulled into something of a grimace as he’d read, and the longer he stood staring down at the page, the more it seemed his upper lip curled in confusion. “Keep up with the rest of us, wouldya?”

“Who says ‘ _gotdamn?_ ’ I mean, outside of…I dunno, old-timey prospectors? The kind that like, pan for gold in creek beds and click their heels together when they find it?” Chris didn’t make any moves to read over Josh’s shoulder or anything like that, but neither did he seem especially interested in looking anywhere _but_ the paper he was holding. “Is, uh…is there more?”

Josh hummed affirmatively. “Oh, there’s…there’s plenty more where that came from, Cochise. Don’t you worry your sweet little head over that shit.”

When another second passed and he hadn’t started reading again, Emily made a grab for the note. “Don’t just fucking _stop!_ ” she snapped when he deftly kept it out of her grasp. “What’s the rest of it _say?!_ ”

***

Four of the little teenyboppers left the fire to wander through the woods. They made their way to their big cozy lodge…then did the most fool thing they could. They stepped right back out into the dark, where they came face to face with something bigger & badder & twice as hungry as Red Riding Hood’s wolf. They looked it right in the eye & flailed like rabbits in traps, shouting & carrying on to mark themselves as tasty morsels to gobble up. Then they ran back to their fire, glad to be safe again.

Did they learn a damn thing from that? Surely not!

***

“That was us,” Hannah said breathlessly, grabbing Matt’s arm as she looked frantically from him to Mike, and then from Mike to Sam. “That was _us!_ We left the fire to come back here, and we saw that…that _thing_ out, out, over…” she devolved into pointing towards the front deck, the memory of those bizarre eyes gleaming in the woods flooding her senses like a bad smell in a small room.

“Fuck,” Mike breathed, raking a hand through his hair. “ _Fuck_. I…” he froze, then whirled on her and Matt. “ _I fucking told you!_ I told you I smelled cigars! And you guys just acted like I was—”

“Wait, cigars?” Jess asked. “Who was smoking cigars? Who _brought_ cigars? What are we, like, sixty?”

“It wasn’t _us!_ ”

Sam clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides, fighting her urge to pace. “Guys,” she said, keeping her voice as low as she could, hoping it would have something of a calmative effect on them. “This could still be a joke, okay? There’s no use in—”

“Easy for _you_ to fucking say,” Mike snapped, “ _You_ didn’t see it! You acted like it was a goddamn _raccoon!_ ”

“ _Gotdamn_ ,” Chris said quietly. It seemed he’d learned his lesson (at least for the time being), because that time he made (got)damn sure no one else heard it leave his mouth.

Matt couldn’t quite decide whether he was trying to comfort Hannah or wrench her hands off of his arm so his blood could keep flowing. He settled on the middle ground, sliding himself out of her grip and putting his arm around her shoulders instead, gently patting her arm after. “Sam’s…Sam’s probably right, okay? She is! We don’t _know_ what we saw, and I mean…look, I’m sorry, man, but I’m still not totally convinced this isn’t Josh pulling one over on us, so—”

With a flat look, Josh’s eyes flicked to Matt. “Really?” he asked, giving the note a brisk shake, “You heard me earlier tonight, right? You were listening to the story I told? You think _this_ is on the same level as that?”

“I’m not trying to be an asshole here, I just—”

But that had made his mind up for him; Josh went back to reading.

***

They must not’ve learned, because then ANOTHER two little teenyboppers left the fire to wander through the woods. They made their way to their big cozy lodge…then did the most fool thing they could. They called out to the voices they heard coming out of the dark, knowing clear & well they were wrong. Call out to something and it’s like to answer, and they called out. They most certainly did. & they were heard. They most certainly were. Then they ran back to their fire, glad to be safe again.

And did they learn a damn thing from that? Surely not!

***

“…y’know, I’m really not appreciating this fairytale bullshit. This isn’t—”

But whatever Mike had meant to say next was cut off as Ashley took a single staggering step to the side, lowering herself on shaky legs until the cushion of the sectional caught her. “The voice…” she muttered, looking terribly grey there against the dark fabric of the couch. She sat with her elbows on her thighs and her fingers pressing hard into her temples, but despite how obvious her shaking was, she still managed to meet Chris’s gaze without a problem. “That was _us_. With the…with the voice.”

“Voice?” Beth asked, her hair very nearly whipping her in the face as she turned to look Chris’s way. “The hell’s she talking about, a voice?”

Sam had tried—she really _had_ —but in the end, she’d given into her urge to pace. She glanced up from the divot she was no doubt wearing into the hardwood, slowing a step, though not stopping. “Wait, what?”

“I…” Chris groaned and shrugged and shook his head. He hadn’t gone pale like Ashley had, not _yet_ , and while it was obvious he was uncomfortable with the whole thing, it didn’t seem he’d devolved into the sort of panic that had begun to dawn in the others. “Look. That doesn’t mean…when we came in here earlier? To get food and stuff? We sort of…heard Jess.”

Reeling back on the couch, Jess pulled a face. “ _Me?_ ”

“Yeah, you. But we found an open window! A-a-and so we figured it was just like, the wind? Because that’s what the wind _does_ , I mean…right? It carries sound!”

“And it’s not like you’re a quiet person,” Emily added over her shoulder.

“Right!”

“ _Hey!_ ”

“Wait, you guys were hearing voices?” Matt looked up from where he’d been trying to console Hannah, his eyebrows knit tightly together. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because. We thought. It was. The _wind_.”

Ashley shook her head and looked down. Her hair fell into her face. She looked very much like someone on the verge of barfing right onto her feet. “Something…some _one_ ,” her voice cracked at that, “Was on the roof.”

“Ash.”

“ _What?_ ”

“It…” she looked up and up and up, her eyes fixing on the massive, pendulous form of the sculpture hanging over their heads. “It sounded kind of like… _footsteps?_ But we thought that was ridiculous, because…I mean, _because_. But then the sculpture was swinging, and…”

“We told _you_ about the thing we saw!” There was no understating the betrayal in Hannah’s voice just then. “And you guys all laughed at us about it! Why wouldn’t you tell us about someone being on the _roof?_ ”

“ _Because_ everyone laughed at you!” Ashley snapped back.

“Yeah, like…w-w-what did you want us to do?” Chris joined in. “Were we supposed to just be like, ‘Oh hey guys, the weirdest thing happened back there! We kept hearing Jess talking to us, and then suddenly it sounded like Santa was doing a merry little holiday jig up on the roof?’” He threw his arms out to his sides, the first cracks of fear beginning to show through his anxiety. “You guys would’ve had a fucking _field day_ with that! Why would we ever—”

“Hey, so, far be it from me to get in the middle of this riveting conversation,” Josh said, taking in a deep breath and letting it out in something that wasn’t exactly a sigh, “But we’re…we’re not quite done yet, kids.”

***

No, they still must not’ve learned anything. Just ask the three OTHER little teenyboppers who left the fire to wander through the woods. They made their way to their big cozy lodge…then did the most fool thing they could. They flipped the gotdamn power on & lit the place up like a Christmas tree, its gennies kicking up a clamor like Hell’s bells, turning them into the loudest & brightest target on the mountain. They brought every eye in the forest down upon them, lit up like a stage as they moved to & fro, peeking out of windows & jumping at shadows. Then they ran back to their fire, glad to be safe again.

Did they learn a damn thing from that? Surely they did not.

***

“Um, excuse me?” Without stating the obvious (that the three little teenyboppers in question were, uh, _them_ ), Emily finally jerked herself away from staring Josh down to look between Beth and Jess instead. “Are you fucking hearing this?”

Jess’s eyes went big as ashtrays as she turned towards Beth, her earrings jingling from how quickly she turned her head. “Oh my God? Oh my God! You _said_ you saw a guy!”

For her part, Beth stared resolutely into middle space; she didn’t want to acknowledge _that_ , she didn’t want to acknowledge Hannah’s distress, she didn’t want to acknowledge the way Josh was staring so soberly down at that paper, she didn’t want to acknowledge that anxious conversation the three of them had had in the woods, she didn’t want to acknowledge the sudden spike of guilt in her stomach at the mention of turning the power back on, she didn’t want to acknowledge _any_ of it. So she didn’t. That was a neat little trick the Washington family had honed over the generations, not acknowledging things—and they were very, _very_ good at it.

In three swift steps, Sam made her way to Josh, peering at the paper from over his arm. “This isn’t funny,” she said, just barely louder than a whisper, “If this is a prank—”

“Sammy. Am I laughing?”

She met his eyes for a moment then went back to looking at the strange, unfamiliar scrawl of the letters printed on the page. Sure he went overboard with the scares sometimes, but this? It didn’t feel like that. This didn’t feel like that _at all._ Plus, it sure didn’t look like Josh’s handwriting—not to _her,_ anyway—and it didn’t sound like the sort of thing he’d write either…and then, as if to drive that point home, he kept reading.

***

Which leaves us one little teenybopper: The Washington boy who told half a story & decided to call it quits long before its natural end. Ain’t no men crawled out of the NW mine, that much is true, & what they did in the dark changed them most certainly. What the law pulled outta that mine stopped being men & started being something else the moment they took their first bite. Something bigger & badder & twice as hungry as Red Riding Hood’s wolf, something that screams out into the night with voices not their own, something blinded by darkness but with its other senses honed razor sharp.

They became WENDIGO & now they haunt this mountain looking for anything alive & warm enough to slake that never-ending hunger they made for themselves down there in the mine. They’ll eat just about anything they can tear off & fit in their mouths, but I’ll tell you what I’ve learned in my time…they like little teenyboppers THE MOST.

But the ten little teenyboppers, well they didn’t know that. So they

***

“…so they…?” Emily stared at him, her eyes drilling holes through his face. “… _so they…?!_ ”

Josh shook his head. “It just ends there. No period, no ‘To be continued,’ no nothing. It just…” He shrugged. “Ends.”

She plucked the paper out of his hands and read it for herself, turning a frantic circle on the hardwood in her thick socks. When she saw precisely what Josh had described, that the story simply ended mid-sentence, she flipped it over, her lower lip beginning to take on a terrified quiver. “What the fuck,” she managed to eke out, “What the _fuck?!_ Was there another page?! Is there more?! Did you see anything?!”

Helpless to do anything else, Sam shook her head. “No, it was just that one piece stuck in the—”

“Nuh-uh. Nope. _Nope!_ ” Jess made a beeline for her stuff, digging through the clothes she’d worn the day before to find her phone. “No way. No _way!_ I am _not_ about to be the blonde girl who dies in the first ten minutes of one of your dad’s shitty horror movies!” She pecked out a few numbers on her phone, brought it up to her ear…

“There’s no reception,” Ashley said quietly, her voice shaking worse than her hands. “I already tried.”

A rustling filled the room as just about everyone else went to check their own phones. A rustling that was promptly followed by a chorus of tense sighs. No one said a damn thing about it, and no one had to. _Of course_ there wasn’t any reception. Of course.

“Oh, fuck this…you musta missed a page or something, Sam.”

“Mike, come on. I’m telling you—”

Stalking over to the door he’d been so hesitant to approach before, Mike peered through the glass with his hands cupped to the pane to help him see. “Fuck a _duck_. All night…all goddamn _night!_ This weirdo’s just been _watching us?!_ Casing the joint?!”

It felt hollow even as she said it, but still Sam tried, “Look, this is…a lot. Obviously this is a lot, okay? But if we don’t stay calm—”

“Stay _calm?!_ ”

“Yes, Emily, we need to—”

“I knew it…I _knew_ something was wrong!” Sounding on the verge of complete hysterics, Hannah whirled on her siblings. “You guys said it was nothing and no one was up here and that, that…that everything was just _raccoons_ and _elk_ , and now—”

“How were we supposed to know?!” Beth threw her arms up into the air, her hands making mad, chopping motions. “What do you want me to _say_ , Han?! Sorry I didn’t realize we were being stalked all night by some crazy, roof-climbing crackhead?”

It didn’t occur to any of them that Josh had been suspiciously quiet until he finally spoke up again. “I think,” he began slowly, his voice low and even and still somehow managing to cut through the chaos of their shouting like a hot knife through butter, “You guys are missing what _I_ feel is a, uh, _deeply_ concerning detail, here.”

Made all fury and fire by Hannah’s accusation, Beth turned her ire on him. “More concerning than us being watched all night, Josh?! More concerning than that?! Whoever this fucker is, he’s been breathing down our necks this whole time and now he’s laughing about it like it’s some kind of _game_ , but you—”

He pulled his upper lip into his mouth and chewed at it for a moment. When he released it again, his fingers moved to anxiously rub at the bridge of his nose. “He called me ‘the Washington boy,’” he said then, looking not to any one of them in particular but to the whole group instead. “How did he know _I_ was the Washington boy?”

“What the fuck does that _matter?!_ ” Beth snapped. “Who cares?! You look like Mom, it’s not rocket science!”

“Yeah? I look like Mom when I’m bundled up in three coats with my hat pulled low, too?” he asked in that same slow drawl, the sound of it horrible in its calmness.

“Then he heard us call you Josh! Or—” she jawed angrily at the air, dropping her hands to her sides and shrugging. “Who _cares?_ ”

But then a ripple of understanding (or something like it) began to creep its way through their ranks.

Mike straightened up from where he’d been leaning against the door. “He knew which story you told,” he said as it occurred to him, turning around to search Josh’s face. “He knew yours was about the mine. He made it a fucking _point_ to mention the mine. _Specifically._ ”

“Sure did.”

Sam raised her knuckles to her mouth, feeling a heavy wave of icy realization sap the last of her optimism. “Then it was your voice. It…it had to be. He knew you from your _voice_.”

He didn’t respond that time around, instead waving his index finger in her direction. ‘Ding ding ding,’ that motion seemed to say, ‘We have ourselves a winner.’

“ _So?!_ ” Beth asked, only for Hannah to echo her a second later. “All you ever _do_ is talk, why is that so…” Slowly, her shouting trailed off into silence. She looked Hannah’s way. It had taken a moment, but finally it seemed the real root of the problem had dawned on her.

Still, eldest sibling that he was, Josh had to turn it into a learning moment. “How’s he know my voice in the first place, B?”

“He’s heard it before,” Ashley answered, her hands steepled in front of her face, her chin resting on her thumbs and her forefingers laying across her lips in a shushing gesture that might’ve been comical in any other circumstance. “Which means…this probably isn’t the first time he’s…” She swallowed hard. “…watched you guys.”

Silence.

Then, “Cool. Yeah. Great. Okay. Why not. Sure.” Chris sat on the very edge of the couch to be side-by-side with Ashley, dropping his own head in his hands and pushing his glasses up past his forehead. “Fantastic.”

“Fuck this. Nonono, _fuuuuuuuck_ this. Do you guys have a, uh, thing? A, _you_ _know_ …” Jess pantomimed when the word wouldn’t come to her, holding her thumb and pinky out and waving them near her face.

“…are you trying to ask if we have a _landline?_ ”

“Yeah! Whatever! Jesus, do you have one or not?!”

“Yeah, in the dining room, just—”

Jess was off like a shot before anyone could say anything else, rounding the corner into the dining room and grabbing the cordless phone from its dock. She held it to her ear, heard the comforting drone of the line’s connection, and without pausing even to glance up at the Washington’s antler chandelier in disgust (who’d thought _that_ monstrosity was a good idea?), she dialed 911.

Back in the great room, the chaos only continued.

“He’s watched us before,” Hannah said, having long-since passed the threshold from breathlessness to plunge right into spiraling horror. “When we were on the porch, that was…that was probably…and we just…”

“There was no way in hell what we saw before was a _person_ , Han. Look, Sam’s right, it was probably some kind of weird animal, that’s all. You saw how fast it went into the trees, and…sorry, but people don’t _do_ that. They _can’t._ Whatever that was, it _wasn’t_ human, okay? We were pretty loud when it freaked us out, so maybe that guy just mentioned that crap to fuck with us since he knew we were already scared.” Matt said it as coolly as he could, and while it was a terrifying suggestion in and of itself, the explanation did, somehow, seem to calm Hannah, if only slightly. He was able to get her sitting again at least, easing her onto the overstuffed armchair near the couch before slowly sliding himself out of the vise of her grip. Then, without saying another word, he strode over to the windows along the far wall, yanking pull string after pull string to close the blinds as tightly as they’d go.

Emily tracked his movement like a cat. “What are you _doing?_ There’s some maniac out there—”

“And I’m not giving him a better view of us than he needs,” Matt answered steadily, his voice resolute and determined. “So either you guys can help me, or…” he let the thought trail off. A moment later, Mike and Beth had joined him, the three of them shuttering the great room as best they could. Then, as an afterthought, “Someone hit the lights, would you? Don’t need our shadows moving around to show him where we are.”

The expression on Sam’s face was nothing short of deep, philosophical contemplation as she resumed her pacing in the dark, one of her hands toying ceaselessly with her hair. There was something about the note, something _other_ than their mystery guest’s identification of Josh, that was sticking in her head and buzzing around her skull like a bumblebee trapped in a mason jar. “What’s a _Wendigo?_ ” she asked after her fourth or fifth circuit around the room. She knew better than to aim the question to the group at large, so she hedged her bets and placed herself between Josh and the part of the couch where Ashley and Chris were sitting. “He talks about your story in the note, and he says the miners were… _Wendigo?_ ”

“Is that really the most important thing right now, Sam?” Chris asked, having gone slightly green where Ash had gone grey. “This dude’s fucking _crazy!_ He’s talking about those whatever-the-fucks, acting like there are fairytale monsters or something out there when the _real_ monster is just _him_ , some weird fucking psycho voyeur peeking in on a bunch of supple young—”

“They’re…I don’t know, horror movie stuff. Legend. Myth? Something like that.” Ashley’s voice sounded smooshed in a way, her fingers still pressing hard against her lips. She kept talking, but had humility enough to look suitably sheepish as she did so, knowing she was just pointlessly rambling when she could’ve been helping Matt and the others. “I think…um…I think there was an episode of _Supernatural_ about them?”

“Oh, then cool! Don’t worry guys, we’re all gonna be fine!” Chris’s voice had taken on a manic sort of edge, as though deciding whether it needed to prepare itself for screaming or sobbing or something else entirely. “Any second now a pair of rugged, denim-wearing forty-somethings will just burst through the front door with their muscle car and we’ll be a-okay!”

“Chris.”

“Nah, he’s got a point Sammy. If anyone hears the opening chords to _Carry On My Wayward Son,_ we’ll know we’re in the clear.”

Sam opened her mouth ( _probably_ to snap at the two of them for making jokes at a time like this, but _possibly_ to ask why in God’s name they knew so much—or anything at all—about _Supernatural_ ), and of course that was the moment Jess made herself known again.

“No! Don’t you—RAGH!” For just an instant she appeared in the doorway of the dining room, the cordless phone pressed hard to her ear, her lips twisted in a scowl that was fast becoming a full-on snarl. “They keep _transferring me!_ What kind of shitty 911 service _is_ this?! Could _someone_ take this seriously, maybe?! What if I was like, being stabbed right now or something?!”

“Tell them you need to speak with their supervisor—see how fast they change their tune _then_.”

Jess pulled the receiver of the phone away from her mouth as she glared at Emily. “Um, sorry, do I _look_ like a forty-five-year-old woman with an asymmetrical A-line bob and caramel-colored lowlights to you? I’m not asking for his fucking _manager!_ ” She stood ramrod straight a moment later, her eyes going distant as, presumably, someone answered. “Hello? Hello?! Oh thank God—”

“This is not happening…this is _so_ not happening…” Hannah’s face was in her hands, making it very difficult to hear her. It felt like her entire body was being shaken by an unseen storm, and no matter how hard she tried to stop or even lessen it, the trembling only got worse. That conversation with Josh and Beth had lodged itself in the forefront of her mind, unshakeable and undeniable, and _why_ hadn’t they made a point of calling their parents right then and there? _Why_ hadn’t they checked with the ranger service beforehand, or, or, or…?

“We still don’t know what this is, okay?” Sam took it upon herself to kneel down by the side of Hannah’s chair, patting her knee in an attempt at comforting her. “It might just be some jerk hunting deer or something, right?” She turned her gaze pointedly on Josh. “And he’s just trying to scare us. _Right?_ ”

He looked up from reading the note the hundredth time with a look of abject disbelief. When it came to _soothing_ fears, he had never really been anyone’s first choice, so Josh…well, he was at something of a loss. Could he have agreed with Sam? Sure, but it would’ve been hollow—there was no question that, whoever this asshole was, he knew the Washingtons well enough to identify them by voice. That was, as people in the horror biz knew, not a _great_ sign.

Before he could say anything to that effect, Jess reappeared in the great room, carrying the phone’s dock as far as she could before its power cord could run out. She didn’t offer any kind of explanation, but instead simply hit a button on the thing’s main hub. Then a voice, nasally and adenoidal and frankly _annoying_ , began piping in over its speakers. “—as soon as we can. We don’t have any cars in the area currently, but we’ll make it a priority. Until then, find a secure part of the residence and make sure all doors and windows are locked.”

“Wait,” Emily interjected, and it was clear by the way the voice on the other side of the call immediately went silent that they hadn’t realized they’d been put on speakerphone. “‘As soon as you can?!’ And how long is _that_ supposed to be?! We have some crazed psychopath out here who’s been _watching us_ all night, and you want us to just—”

After a throat clearing that sounded a little too much like a cover-up for a momentary sputter, the operator spoke up again. “Ma’am, ma’am please, we understand your concerns—”

“My _concerns?!_ ”

“—but Mount Washington _is_ a mountain—”

“Oh stop the fucking presses, that’s news to me!”

“ _Mike!_ You’re not helping!”

“—and it will take some time for the nearest unit to make their way to you. Considering the time now…” There was a beat where they could hear the frantic typing of computer keys in the background, “They’ll likely reach you by…7:20 am.”

That time it was Ashley’s turn to splutter. “Dawn?!” she asked, looking up from her own feet, “You want us to wait _until_ _dawn?!_ ”

“ _Until dawn?!_ ” Hannah repeated, pressing her fingers hard against her mouth as though it was only a matter of time before she started chewing her nails off. “How are we supposed to make it _until dawn?!_ ”

Emily, of course, had to get her own two cents in: “You expect us to just sit here _until dawn?!_ ”

“There’s some crazy guy out here leaving us love poems by the door, and you want us to chill _until dawn_ ,” Mike scoffed. “Are you shitting me?”

Lowering the blinds of one more window (while thinking bitterly of the ones that didn’t close), Matt paused only long enough to shoot the group of them a perplexed glance. “Why do you guys keep saying it like that?”

“Please stay calm,” the operator said, doing a piss-poor job of taking his own advice if the crack in his voice was anything to go by, “The closest unit has been informed and is heading your way to check it out. Again, for the time being, find a secure place in the residence and lock all doors and windows until you hear from the officers. If you—” _Click._

Now, up on a snowy mountaintop as they were, there were plenty of reasons why a phone might suddenly go dead. Storms, snow, wind, freezing temperatures, animals…but the timing of the line giving way to silence felt _way_ too coincidental. For a horribly sticky, stretchy moment, the ten of them stood spread between the great room and dining room, listening to the dead air hissing over the landline.

And then panic _really_ set in again.

“Someone cut the fucking line!” Emily all but wailed, pulling her arms in over herself defensively.

“We don’t know that.” Sam raised her voice to be heard over the cacophony of everyone speaking at once. “ _We don’t know that_ ,” she repeated more firmly when it was clear no one had heard her the first time around. Judging by their reactions…they hadn’t really heard her the second time, either.

Amid the panic, Beth grabbed Josh by the arm, yanking him in towards her. She knew there wasn’t a whole lot of danger that anyone would see their sudden huddle and pry, but even so, she made a point to muscle him around so they could talk with some measure of privacy. “Okay Kubrick, congrats, you’re the boss now! I know this is the role you’ve been waiting your whole freaking life for, so you better get a handle on this shit before it goes nuclear!”

“ _Me?!_ ” Josh wasn’t a splutterer, and this wasn’t an exception to that rule, but he seemed terribly close. There was no sign of his usual smugness as he hunched himself closer to her to further cut off the chances of anyone overhearing them—oh no, the tables had turned, and unless she was wrong (and she _wasn’t_ ), Beth thought what she saw on his face was the real deal, baby; the crown prince of horror himself was _scared_. “Why the hell am _I_ in charge all of a sudden?”

“Oh gee,” she hissed, “Huh, let’s see…how about…because you’re the eldest, for one! And this is _your_ mountain! Also, weren’t you the one bragging a few hours ago about being the expert when it comes to stuff like this?”

“‘Stuff like this?’” Josh repeated. “What, stuff like random psycho stalkers in the woods who…” He paused. “Fuck. Oh goddammit.” He grimaced. “I _am_ the expert when it comes to stuff like this aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” Beth said, reaching over to condescendingly pat his cheek before he slapped her hand away, “So mister Big Bad Leader of the Midnight Society better get his fucking act together and—”

He hadn’t been paying attention earlier, so he didn’t know exactly who it was who’d turned the lights off, but Josh was suddenly terribly grateful for them as he scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to exorcise the worst of his discomfort while simultaneously steeling himself. Had the situation been different, oh he would’ve given her such a lecture about false equivalences, how wanting to lead everyone in a night of ghost stories was perhaps _slightly_ different from shouldering the responsibility of putting the place on lockdown, but who _else_ was going to do it? Mike? Sam? Emily? Matt? _Chris?!_ Please. Please!

“Okay, everyone shut _up!_ ” For the second time that night, his narrator’s voice came in clutch. It rang out through the lodge, a whip crack in an otherwise silent night, and just as they had when sitting around the fire, everyone fell quiet and turned towards him. “Cochise and Ash are gonna do a lap—make sure all the doors on this floor are locked.”

In almost perfect unison the two of them looked up from where they’d been dissociating on the couch, asking “We are?” in similarly tremulous voices.

“You are,” Josh answered, snapping his fingers once before whirling his index finger in a corkscrew motion, urging them to start _now_. “You guys know this place better than the rest of these…than everyone else. Just do it.” Once they got up to check the doors (trading a nervous look between themselves), he turned back to the others, hoping against hope that he was managing to appear at least _somewhat_ put-together as he continued. “First floor’s the safest bet. They said get somewhere secure, right? Screening room only has two doors, both have interior locks, we can shut ourselves up tight in there until the cops show. Plus, the place is full of chairs and beanbags and shit, so we won’t have to just stand around with our thumbs up our asses.”

That seemed to be the magic word—stopping just long enough to gather up a couple blankets and pillows, Emily and Jess made a break for the staircase, stumbling a bit as their socks slid on the floor, having to steady themselves against one another before hurrying down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Not even a moment later, Beth had grabbed Hannah by the crook of her arm, all but dragging her out of the chair and down the stairs after them. She shot Josh a brief glance over her shoulder before disappearing down onto the first floor with the other girls, but hell if he could decipher it.

“How are we supposed to hear if they come?” Matt asked, leaning on one leg as he peered around the staircase, watching Chris and Ashley try each of the doorknobs in turn. “If we’re downstairs, we won’t hear anyone knocking.”

“Place is a _lodge_ , man,” Josh said as though that explained everything. “Shit’s wired up so you can hear guests arrive no matter where you are. All they gotta do is ring the bell and one of us can go check. No sweat.”

“Yeah, well…” Mike seemed much less interested in the slow circuit being made around the main floor than he was in getting downstairs; his eyes kept moving towards the first floor landing no matter how hard he tried to focus on anything else, and he’d taken to leaning on the railing. “Pardonnez-moi, but I think we need to sit and fucking reconsider _that_ part of the plan. Who’s to say it’s gonna be the _cops_ who start ringing first?” He lowered his voice as he said that last part as though worried about offending any of the others’ delicate sensibilities.

“That’s why we’ll _check_ ,” Sam said, standing on the third step down. She didn’t want to tuck herself away into the cinema—not _yet_ —but neither did she want to be too far from the twins if either of them (read: Hannah) suddenly needed her. “We’ll just…well, we’ll be really, really careful if that happens, and we’ll go in pairs.”

Mike thought it over for a second before shrugging, skirting around her to join the girls in the screening room.

“Buddy system…smart,” Matt nodded, patting Sam’s shoulder as he too passed her by.

“Oh, you know me,” she muttered, drumming her fingers against the railing as she and Josh waited for Chris and Ashley to finish up, “I’m just _full_ of good ideas waiting to happen…” Once it was just the two of them, she looked Josh’s way again, pulling her mouth into a shape that she hoped somehow managed to communicate the strange whirl of thoughts spinning around in her head; Sam wasn’t entirely sure she knew what a ‘Hey-what-I’m-about-to-say-is-totally-a-joke-unless-you-don’t-think-it’s-a-joke-then-I’m-totally-being-serious’ smile looked like, but she thought maybe she’d be able to pull it off anyway. “And we’re…definitely not worried about it being a _Wendigo?_ ” she asked. “…whatever a _Wendigo_ is?”

Another knife of regret twisted itself into Josh’s gut. This was a conversation he would’ve sold his soul for under normal circumstances! Sitting around bullshitting about the possibility of monstrous creatures of myth with the lovely Miss Giddings? Yes please! As it stood though, his eyes were tracking the unexpected (and horrible) movement of the sculpture hanging above them. He wasn’t sure he could’ve said precisely when that sucker had started moving, but…well, it was going now.

Oh it was going.

“Yeah, I’m not too worried about the angry spirits of some lost coalminers right now, Sammy,” he said, reaching out to bodily grab and push Ashley and Chris down the stairs the moment they came back around the bend, “I’m sure that’s a shocker, but uh…no. No, I think our problem’s a little more human in nature.”

“Well that’s…” From where she was standing, Sam couldn’t see the sculpture as it swung, but she could _absolutely_ see the look on Josh’s face. “…comforting?”

The lodge’s cinema was a comfortable, sprawling space full of only the finest, cushiest seating and the pinnacle of movie-viewing technology. It had never felt quite so cramped or quiet, nor had the doors and walls ever seemed quite so flimsy. The twins had been sure to lock door leading to the guest room and hallway beyond the instant they’d gotten down there, and once Sam and Josh brought up the rear of the group, the main door was locked as well. After an _exceptionally_ brief discussion, Mike and Matt took it upon themselves to push and drag two of the fancy recliners across the floor to barricade both, just in case.

What happened then somehow seemed ridiculous and made perfect sense all at once—they slept. Not all of them, of course, but more than a few found themselves nodding off as they curled up in what remained of the chairs and beanbags, the lateness of the hour and the exertion of their adrenaline mixing into a potent cocktail to pull them under again.

Emily and Jess, their reconciliation apparently complete, half-sat and half-leaned in their seats as they slept, their shoulders and heads resting against one another’s.

Tucked away into the corner of the room closest to the projection screen, Sam drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep sitting with her back upright on the wall, Beth snoring away on her shoulder, Hannah laying flat across both of their laps with her glasses perched at a sharp angle.

Ashley and Josh, both _way_ too keyed up to sleep, sat twisted around in their chairs, their eyes moving back and forth between the two doors as though watching the world’s most captivating ping pong match, Chris nodding off (but regularly sitting up with a start and pretending he wasn’t) between them.

And while they’d both started with the best of intentions as it came to standing guard, only Matt remained sitting on the floor in front of the projection booth to watch the doors with a keen eye; Mike had long-since slumped to the floor in a ragdoll heap, one arm flung over his face like a fine Victorian lady on a fainting couch as he snoozed.

There in the dark, the rhythmic sound of breathing replacing the usual bassy thump of movie soundtracks being piped in over the speakers, time seemed to stretch on for an eternity. In those moments where they were awake enough, they’d check their phones to see four minutes had passed. Eleven. Two. Never as long as it felt, driving them past the point of frustration and disbelief and into the territory of surreality. It was like living in a nightmare, their eyes drawn to every little movement, their ears hearing phantom thumps and creaks that weren’t actually there…

In the end, it was a trilling alarm from Sam’s phone that woke them all up for real, very nearly causing ten simultaneous heart attacks as they jumped out of their skin. “Sorry!” she muttered blearily, “Sorry, sorry, sorry…time for my morning jog, I guess.” Only…only that couldn’t be right, could it? On weekends, she usually set her alarm for…“Hey, what time did they say they’d get to us? When you talked to them?”

“Dawn,” came Emily’s glum reply as she rubbed at her face, going to great pains to make a show of nudging Jess away from her despite having been the one to fall asleep on _her_.

“No, I—they gave a time, didn’t they? Like an actual time?” Sam glanced around the cinema but it was hard to see much beyond everyone’s grainy outlines without the lights on. “7-something?”

“Um…yeah? Yeah, I think it was like…7:20, 7:30? Somewhere around there.”

Shit. That was what she’d thought. “Okay, well, I’m not saying this _means_ anything,” Sam began again, still staring down at her phone while the twins stretched out, “But, uh…it’s 8:15.”

Matt stood from his spot on the floor and abruptly flipped the light switch so they could see one another and the resulting groans and hisses from the rest of them wouldn’t have been out of place in a den of vampires. “I didn’t hear anyone ring the doorbell,” he said, squinting a bit against the light as he searched the others’ faces, “They _would’ve_ rung the bell if no one answered a knock, right? There’s no way that they _wouldn’t_ have gone for the bell after getting a call like that, is there?”

“They got an SOS from the vacation home of a famous movie director with more money than God,” Mike said flatly, covering his face with both hands. He hadn’t sat up yet, meaning he was still sprawled on the ground as he said it, his voice not exactly carrying past the back row of chairs. “Yeah bud, I’m pretty sure they woulda hit the bell.”

“So what? They just… _ignored us?_ ” In movements much too fluid to be anything but muscle memory, Jess pulled the elastics out of her hair, finger-combed it, and began anxiously weaving it into a new braid. “Can they _do_ that?!”

“We don’t…” Sam stopped herself before she could say the words that had been resting on the tip of her tongue: _We don’t know that_. By that point, she thought she’d probably said that little chestnut upwards of twenty times. It was becoming mechanical. She swallowed it down, rubbing her eyes before easing herself up from the beanbag she’d crashed on. “I don’t think we should rush to conclusions. Maybe some snow came in last night and they’re behind, or the road they used was iced over or something…I mean, think about it! We use the cable car to get up and down, but they have to use those crappy little access roads. Or maybe they really did just knock and they’re out there looking around right now.”

“Or maybe that crazy stalker guy _got them_ ,” Hannah piped in, face contorted with the sort of misery usually only seen in those suffering severe food poisoning. Beside her, Beth didn’t say a single word. She did, however, swivel her gaze towards her dear brother, raising one of her eyebrows in a judgmental arch.

 _The joys of being the eldest,_ Josh thought to himself, making a silent mental note to maybe, perhaps, _possibly_ cut down on any future endeavors where he played up being the leader for any reason. Being the ringleader of their ten-ring circus wasn’t actually proving as fun as he’d hoped. “Cops or no cops, here’s what we’re doing, so if we could all stop jibber-jabbering, that’d be swell.” He pulled in a deep, sharp breath through his nose and gave his cheeks a couple brisk smacks to try and knock some of the grogginess away. The novelty of everyone shutting up and turning to him like lemmings had, surprise, _also_ worn off. “We’re gonna go upstairs, everyone’s gonna pack their shit up, we’re going to beat feet to the cable cars, and we’re gonna hustle like fifth graders during the Presidential fitness test. Questions? Comments?”

And, well, no, no one _did_ have questions or comments, but neither did anyone want to be the first to head up the stairs and into the great room again.

Once they _had_ gotten upstairs, though…well, things moved pretty quickly after that. Everyone crammed their shit into their bags and bundled up in their coats and boots; a task that might’ve taken them an hour during any other weekend was good and done in damn near a _minute._ No one was in the mood to joke or fight or draw attention to how eerie the great room was with all of its blinds drawn at that time of day. They weren’t in the mood for _anything_ but getting right the fuck out of there.

As the others finished up, Josh pulled his sisters into a huddle, one arm slung around either of their shoulders as he yanked them in tight. “Now one of you’s gonna have to lock the door behind us—think you can manage that?”

“I told you guys something was wrong…” Hannah muttered, either not having heard him or simply _pretending_ she hadn’t. “I _said_ something was weird, and you just made fun of me, and—”

Josh looked more fully towards Beth.

“Yeah, sure, fine. It’ll get locked. You have the key to the cable car ready to go, right? Do you think we can all fit into one? I don’t think anyone’s gonna want to wait around for a second.”

“—I’m _so_ telling Mom and Dad when we get home, and I swear to _God_ —”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s gonna be a tight fit, but we’re all pals here, right?” Josh flashed her a sardonic smile that didn’t come close to reaching his eyes. “We can fit in one. Weight limit should be fine too, I’ve seen Pop load those fuckers up with equipment that weighs way more than our scrawny little entourage here.”

“—I am _never_ coming up here with you guys again. Never! Never, ever, ever! I knew this whole idea was so _dumb_. It’s not enough that you have to embarrass us in front of our friends, but we have to almost get _murdered_ too, and—”

As though sharing a wavelength, Beth and Josh straightened up at the same time, glancing to the others as they slung their own bags over their shoulders. “Hope you guys have your walkin’ shoes on,” Josh said, gnawing his upper lip for only a second before flipping the locks of the front door. “I mean it, no fucking around once we’re out there, you got me? Right down the path we came before. It’s pretty much a straight shot to the station, so let’s go. C’mon.” And with that he opened the door, propping it open with his foot to let everyone else rush out onto the front stoop.

They moved in one great, nervous mass, an undulating amoeba of anxiety and squeaky snow boots, and for a moment—glorious and shining—it really seemed that their escape plan would go off without a hitch. No crazed axe-murderer jumped out at them from the other side of the door, there were no shrill war cries on the wind, everyone was moving in a neat and orderly fashion…

Then Beth stopped cold. “Oh… _fuck_.”

“What? _What?!_ ”

She stood at the very edge of the stairs, she and her bag blocking everyone else’s escape. “Fuck,” Beth said again, her hand feeling weak even as it clamped that much harder onto the handle of her suitcase. There was no way she was seeing what she thought she was seeing—no way at all.

Pushing his way through the throng, Josh joined her at the front, peering around her with little difficulty. “What? Why aren’t you…” His throat went uncomfortably tight as he found himself looking at what lay below them in the lodge’s front yard. “Fuck,” he breathed, parroting her earlier sentiment.

There, at the base of the stairs, was a police cruiser.

An _empty_ police cruiser.

The driver side door was ajar just enough that the dim light inside the car was on, making it abundantly clear in the dull morning sunlight that there was no one inside of it. It was just parked in the snow, sitting at a slight angle. Empty.

“What do we do _now?_ ” Beth asked, her voice more whisper than words as she turned to Josh with wide eyes.

Feeling the weight of not just his sisters’ but _everyone’s_ attention on him, Josh swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. “We stick to the plan, obviously,” he said as calmly as he could, “Beeline to the cable cars, get to terra firma, call the cops the _second_ we have reception…”

“I’m…pretty sure the cops are, um,” Matt narrowed his eyes slightly as he peered over Josh’s shoulder, taking inventory of the situation, “Aware.”

“Well, then we call and let the rest of the precinct know we’re so, so thankful that they never even knocked to let us know they were here. Maybe we fill out one of those little review cards for them—‘After being bounced back and forth from operator to operator, officers took several hours to get to me and my friends while we were being hunted by a bloodthirsty maniac in the middle of the woods. Five stars.’” Emily spoke quickly and bitterly, her fingers growing tingly from how hard she was grasping onto her bag.

“We all agree this is a bad scene, right?” Chris asked after a moment, making a sound of disapproval when Mike hauled off and smacked him upside the back of his head. “I was just fucking _asking_ , dude! Everyone’s being all coy about the fact that whoever was in that car is _clearly_ —”

“ _Fuck_.” He said it softly enough, but the narrator voice was the narrator voice—everyone went dead silent again as Josh’s posture changed. Briefly, he held a hand up as though telling them to stop, or pay attention, or something else that probably seemed _way_ more obvious in his head, before pointing vaguely and beginning the slow descent down the stairs. It would’ve made sense for him to take stock of what the others were doing behind him, to check that Hannah or Beth had thought to lock the front door (they had), to make sure they hadn’t lost any stragglers (they hadn’t), but he was finding it very hard to focus on anything just then.

Anything that wasn’t the piece of paper flapping gently in the wind.

Sam seemed to notice it right about that time too, pulling in a quiet gasp from somewhere to his left. Ashley saw it next, he thought, if her tiny “Oh _no_ ” was anything to go by.

Just like the piece Sam had found during the night, this one was wedged between the glass and the metal of the cruiser’s driver’s side door, suggesting the sicko had rolled the window down, placed it gingerly on the track, and then rolled it back up for effect. “Don’t touch that!” _someone_ said, but they were far, far too late.

Josh grabbed the edge of the paper, testing its resistance before sliding it out in one clean motion, unfolding it to see…yeah. His eyes fell closed for a moment and he sucked his teeth as he gathered himself. “Hey, so, remember how our little fairytale just kind of _ended_ earlier?” He wasn’t asking any one of them in particular, so he didn’t wait for an answer to continue. “Yeah. Well. I think this is chapter two.” And without any further ado, he picked up where the first page had left off.

***

…COULD’VE wound up dead as doornails in the belly of the beast. But imagine my surprise when they spent the rest of the night telling their cute little stories safe and warm inside their big, fancy lodge & proved they HAD learned something after all! & just like all good little girls & boys in fairystories, they were rewarded for this unexpected show of wisdom.

They got to live another day.

When the sun came up & the morning light burned the Wendigo’s eyes, the ten little teenyboppers made their way down the mountain quick as you please & they never, ever, EVER returned, so long as they lived.

PTO.

***

“PTO?” Matt puzzled over the final line, brow furrowed even as he shot an apprehensive look over his shoulder. “Initials, do you think?”

“Maybe we’re being stalked by the dreaded Potato Killer,” Chris joked as he rubbed the back of his head where Mike had smacked him…only for his anxious chuckling to trail off as every last one of them turned to glare at him. “…just trying to lighten the mood, guys, sheesh.”

Taking a step forward, Ashley shook her head and pointed to the tattered piece of paper in Josh’s hands. “No, it’s…um, antiquated shorthand that we don’t really use anymore, like how PS is used to mean ‘postscript.’ PTO means ‘please turn over.’” Her mouth pulled itself into a nervous pucker. “So, uh, maybe you should…turn it…over?”

Josh met her eyes. The two of them looked at one another for a good long time, neither wanting to know what was on the other side but neither sure they could walk away before they _did_. He pulled in a breath, flipped the paper over, and read what he saw there.

***

Bears can’t smell your monthlies, but they’ll sure as hell be able to smell THIS, so best you get to moving before they do.

***

His brow creased. “Well…that’s one hell of a mystery no one thought was a mystery and didn’t even really need solving, but damn if it didn’t just get solved.”

Still rather red around the ears from everyone’s reaction to his joke, Chris joined them, wondering aloud, “What do you think he meant by ‘they’ll be able to smell _this_ ,’ though? Like…what’s ‘ _this?_ ’ The note? Did he spray it with some _Eau de Maniac_ , or—”

That’s when Hannah began to scream.

She’d made the cardinal mistake of any horror movie heroine—she’d seen something odd (in this case, a strange path in the snow where it almost appeared something had been _dragged_ ), and so she’d decided to investigate. All it had taken was a few steps past the picnic table, a brief turn of her head, and…there it had been. At first the only thing her brain had registered had been the _color_ of it all, but then the rest fell into place. The world threatened to spin out beneath her as she stood there, stock-still, fingers curled around the straps of her backpack, the gruesome scene in front of her gleaming red in the lenses of her glasses.

Like the poor miner in Josh’s story, she didn’t even realize she’d screamed until Beth had grabbed her around the middle, pulling her to the side so she could see what was wrong.

“Han, what’s— _oh my God!_ ”

And there, on the ground, partially adhered to the ice by thick strands of…fuck, something that looked an awful lot like _muscle_ , was…was…

Mike was the first to make it over to them, skidding on the ice and very nearly faceplanting onto the awful thing. “What’s th— _holy shitballs!_ ” he exhaled, the cloud of his breath nowhere near enough to obscure his view of what was _undeniably_ a human arm. A _fresh_ human arm. A fresh human arm that (not that he was an expert or anything) sure looked like it had been torn off of a body fairly fucking _recently._

“ _UH?!_ ” Matt added eloquently, turning away as quickly as he could to block Jess and Emily from getting any closer and seeing the horrible thing. “You guys…you don’t want to…just don’t, okay?” he said when his words continued to fail him, “Just don’t.” And while the two of them eyed him warily, they didn’t exactly fight him on it.

Hands clapped over her mouth, Hannah spun around, Beth pulling her close and letting her bury her face in her shoulder. Frantically, Beth turned, ushering Josh over with nothing short of wide-eyed terror.

“That…” Josh began as he and the others joined them, Chris gagging at and spinning away from the sight of it, Ashley grabbing the back of his parka as she stood rooted to the spot. “…is… _wildly_ fucked up. Even by _my_ standards.”

“Oookay,” Sam said in that same too-bright, too-chipper tone she’d used when Emily and Jess’s arguing had reached its fever pitch the night before. “I think we should all stop looking at…” _The dismembered arm_. “…that, and get moving, huh? Yeah? Can we do that instead, maybe?”

After another moment of stunned silence, Matt pulled in a sudden, sharp breath, bursting back to life before them. “Yeah, uh huh, sounds like a plan.” He met Sam’s eyes briefly, then grabbed Mike by the crook of his arm, trying to bodily haul him away from the—oh God, it was a _crime scene_ , wasn’t it?! It was a fucking _crime scene_. A crime scene they’d only just narrowly avoided being part of.

“You heard the lady,” Mike said, stumbling for the first few steps Matt tugged him along before catching himself and breaking into a light jog, waving madly for the girls to join up. He lowered his voice into a gruff whisper as he added, “Zip your lips and get the lead out of your pants—if I get to that fucking cable car first I’m not waiting for _any_ of you shitheads.”

They didn’t need to be told twice.

It was only once the ten of them had crammed themselves like sardines inside a single cable car to begin their slow descent down the mountain that ol’ Jack Fiddler let himself exhale. Christ alive, it felt like he’d been holding that breath since yesterday morning…and shit, that probably wasn’t too far-off of an assessment.

The whole damn night had been one close call after another, and while he knew he’d have to make himself scarce once the Sheriff started poking around for her missing officers (a shame, that, but as Blackwood residents born and raised, they _really_ should’ve known better), that was just fine by him. Scarce was a way of life for him up there on Mount Washington, and scarce was the reason he’d managed to live so damn long without losing too many body parts.

So sure, the world had lost a lawman or two last night to one of the old boys, but not a single one of those stupid kids had gotten so much as a scratch on their pretty little heads…and that? That was nothing short of a gotdamn _miracle,_ considering how close a few of them had come. Shit, that moment out there on the porch…well, he had to put that from his mind. The kids had been all right, if scared shitless, and that was victory enough in his eyes. Er, _eye,_ if one wanted to be real pedantic about it.

He removed the stump of his cigar from between his teeth, flicking it into a nearby snowdrift as he leaned against the old tree, hocking and spitting into the brush a moment later. When the cable car was only a speck below him, he finally moved from his hiding spot, hiking the straps of his flamethrower higher and shouldering his rifle as he turned on his heel. The two great lumbering wolfdogs at his side followed as he headed into the woods, their footsteps whisper-quiet even as they entered the underbrush. Truly, the three of them moved like ghosts through that cursed landscape, the only sound to mark their presence being the low on-again-off-again chuckling coming from Jack. A thought had gone and lodged itself in his head, you see, and he was having some difficulty getting it unstuck.

He glanced down to his dogs with a lopsided grin, the shallow cuts on his neck still swollen and bloody from the claws that had raked him during the night. “Guess they’re _all_ gonna have a halfway decent story to throw around next time they have themselves a jamboree, won’t they? Not like that kiddy shit they were passin’ around last night,” he laughed, shoulders shaking as the dogs looked up at him with their golden eyes. The sound was phlegmatic as it rattled around in his chest, but that was just fine by him too.

A lot was just fine by ol’ Jack Fiddler’s standards then, and why not? He’d bagged himself a _Wendigo_ in the night, after all! The kids had made that harder to do than it normally would’ve been, but…well, even a man like him could admit that it felt awfully nice to have a good deed like keeping those idiots alive under his belt. He held no great love for the Washingtons after they’d gone and bought up the whole damn mountain like the land was nothing more than a candy bar at the corner store, but hell, that didn’t mean he wanted to see their (admittedly stupid) children picked clean as a Thanksgiving turkey. No sir, that wouldn’t have sat right on his conscience at all. Not one bit.

“The ten little teenyboppers went wee, wee, wee all the way home…and they all lived happily ever after…” he said as the trees grew thicker around them, the snow thinning below their feet. "The end."

And from somewhere even deeper in the woods, somewhere that the sun never reached and no sane man ever thought to tread, somewhere where the mineshafts opened up to breathe their poisoned air and spit out the rotting things squirming around inside of them, something screamed as though in reply.

The dog to his right sniffed the air and raised its snout to the sky, letting out a mournful howl that the second quickly picked up, and, grinning, Jack Fiddler cocked his gun.

“Well...for now, anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For now, anyway indeed ;)
> 
> Hey everyone, thanks SO much for reading! Like I said right at the beginning, this was my first holiday season in two years where I didn't have my massive fic the (Almost)s to get me through those wintertime blues...so I hope you all found this fic as fun a way to ring in the new year and dive into 2021 as I did!! 
> 
> Thanks for coming along for the ride!

**Author's Note:**

> HERE WE GO!!!
> 
> I know a whole slew of you know me over on tumblr, so I'm sorry if this is me being a broken record buuuUUUUUT...this is my first holiday season in two years where I don't have The (Almost)s to work on, and WOW, what a weird feeling that is!!! So when this idea came to me, literally fully formed in my head, I knew I had to just...go with it.
> 
> So I'm going with it. WE are going with it ;P
> 
> I really, really hope you guys have fun with this story, because I'm having so much fun writing it, and it just felt (to me at least) like a fun little distraction from all the strangeness this holiday season has brought with it. 
> 
> As always, I hope you and yours are hanging in there and staying healthy, safe, and warm during all of this <3 If you celebrate any holidays, I hope they are/were/will be perfectly lovely and as stress-free as possible :) Thanks for reading, and buckle the fuckle in, because we're going places!


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